A novel indolium salt as a highly sensitive and selective fluorescent sensor for cyanide detection in water.

A highly sensitive fluorescent turn-on cyanide probe is developed based on benzylidenes containing methylindolium group. Three benzylidene derivatives were synthesized from the condensations of three benzaldehyde derivatives and methyleneindoline. Only one of these three derivatives shows strong blue fluorescent response selectively to CN- which can be clearly observed in submicromolar range as the result of the cyanide addition to the indolium group. The detection of cyanide with this compound is optimized in aqueous media using non-ionic surfactant and sonication method to give very low limit of detection in subnanomolar range. The probe is also developed into a paper-based and gel-based sensing kits that can readily detect cyanide ion in micromolar range by naked eye under a common black light (360nm) illumination.