Abstract:
Six conjugated polymers (CPs) were physically blended with waterborne polyurethane (WPU) to prepare a WPU-wrapped fluorescence sensor array for the detection of tetracyclines (TCs) in water. The shape of the film array prepared by blending WPU with CPs is regular, and the fluorescence emission of the system is strong and stable. After swelling, an interconnected porous structure was formed in the WPU matrix, which increased the contact probability between the attached CPs and TCs in water, thus enhancing the fluorescence response of the array. The fluorescence images before and after TCs detection were captured by a camera, and the RGB (Red-Green-Blue) values of the photos were extracted to afford an 18-dimensional vector database. The dimensionality of the data was reduced by principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA). The results showed that the fluorescence sensor array had a good ability to discriminate structurally different TCs, and the prediction accuracy of the LDA model reached 100%. Our WPU-wrapped fluorescence detection array is advantageous in terms of simplicity in preparation, cost and stability, and is expected to be used as an "electronic tongue" in environmental surveillance to detect and identify pollutants such as TCs in water.