Fabrication of conjugated polymer encapsulated fluorescent hybrid micelles for augmented, highly selective and step-wise detection of nitroaromatic pollutants and hepatobiliary biomarker

Development of smart strategies for monitoring environmental contaminants and disease biomarkers has become a research hotspot concerning environmental protection and human health issues. Herein, we present facile fabrication of conjugated polymer based fluorescent hybrid micelles (PF-Plu-Mic) as an unprecedented superquenching probe for selective detection of pollutants 4-nitroaniline (4-NA) and 2,6-dichloro-4-nitroaniline (DCNA) in natural water samples at ppb levels. Interestingly, PF-Plu-Mic could also be transformed into solid-state platform for realizing rapid, on-site and picogram level detection of these pollutants. The unique response of PF-Plu-Mic towards 4-NA/DCNA is attributed to strong inner-filter effect (IFE) and favorable photoinduced electron transfer (PET). Finally, an assay for hepatobiliary biomarker γ-glutamyltransferase (GGT) is developed using L-glutamic acid γ-(4-nitroanilide) as enzyme substrate and PF-Plu-Mic as a superior sensing material. In the presence of GGT, the substrate was catalyzed into 4-NA, which then promote IFE/PET with PF-Plu-Mic resulting in a sensitive fluorometric assay for GGT (LOD-16 mU/L) with capability of performing detection in serum. Thus, the proposed fluorescent hybrid system represents a new type of dual-function probe with robust potential in environmental monitoring and clinical examination of hepatobiliary disorders.