Aqueous phosphate detection using Eu(acac) 3
Currently, the majority of phosphate-sensitive phosphors reported in literature are metal-based complexes that require complicated and expensive synthesis to prepare. Here, in this study, we investigate the phosphate detecting capabilities of an inexpensive off-the-shelf phosphor: Eu(acac) 3 . We characterize its phosphate sensitivity as a function of sensor concentration and find that the quenching coefficient is inversely proportional to sensor concentration. This results in the limit-of-detection scaling linearly with sensor concentration. We determine its concentration-independent sensitivity to be 1.558 ± 0.012, which results in our lowest sensor concentration (44 μM) having a limit-of-detection of 3.39 ± 0.68 μM. We also find that for phosphate concentrations less than the sensor concentration, the fluorescence intensity ratio behaves linearly, but transitions to a non-linear functionality as the phosphate concentration exceeds the sensor concentration.