Ruthenium(II) complex encapsulated multifunctional metal organic frameworks based electrochemiluminescence sensor for sensitive detection of hydrogen sulfide.

Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) based sensors exhibited a good deal of merits on sensitive detection like low reagent consumption, good chemical stability and high detection efficacy. Here, we reported a novel electrochemiluminescence (ECL) sensor which was based on tris(2,2'-bipyridyl) ruthenium(II) (Ru(bpy)32+) encapsulated multifunctional metal organic frameworks (Ru-MOFs) as nanocarrier and nanoreactor for sensitive detection of H2S. Moreover, novel co-reactants NBD-amine was introduced into the ECL sensor as recognition probe. The introducing of Ru-MOFs successfully increased the amount of luminescent probe in the sensing system. At the same time, the Ru-MOFs as nanoreactors improved the molecule reaction efficiency inside the MOFs, including Ru(bpy)32+/co-reactants, and NBD-amine/H2S. Furthermore, the Ru-MOFs has superior adsorption capacity for H2S, which will facilitate the enrichment of H2S at the sensing interface. These were all contributed to enhance the ECL signal and improve the sensitivity of proposed ECL sensor. As a result, the proposed ECL sensor had excellent detection performance for H2S with the dynamic range from 1.0 × 10-11 mol L-1 to 1.0 × 10-4 mol L-1 and the detection limit was 2.5 × 10-12 mol L-1.