A Highly Selective and Sensitive Colorimetric Chemosensor for the Detection of Hydrogen Sulfide: A Real-time Application in Multiple platforms.

Calorimetric chemosensors are found to be advantageous sensing systems due to their simplicity and favorable responsive properties. Although some colorimetric probes have been reported to detect hydrogen sulfide (H2 S), the creation of rapid, highly selective and sensitive probes for the detection of H2 S remains a challenging target. In this work, we established dinitrosulphonamide decorated phenanthridine and 2,4-dinitro-N-(4-(7,8,13,14-tetrahydrodibenzo[a, i]phenanthridin-5-yl)phenyl)benzenesulfonamide (PHSH), for the calorimetric detection of H2 S. H2 S-triggered thiolysis of PHSH resulted in a marked absorption enhancement alongside a visual color change from colorless to dark yellow. The result indicated that the chemosensor showed high sensitivity and selectivity with a fast response of less than 10 s with a detection limit as low as 6.5 nM. The chemosensor reaction mechanism with H2 S was studied by UV-vis, 1 H NMR, mass and HPLC analysis. In addition, the chemosensor has been used for the determination of H2 S in many real-time samples.