Lead as own luminescent sensor for determination.

In our experiments, it was observed that adding bromide to Pb2+ solution of N,N'-dimethylformamide (DMF), the highly emissive cluster Pb4Br11(3-) can be formed and the fluorescence intensity of the formed cluster is proportional to the concentration of Pb2+, based on which, a novel, simple approach that uses the emission from itself as the sensor for determination of Pb2+ is proposed. Under the optimum conditions, the linear range and detection limit is 1.0 x 10(-7) to 1.0 x 10(-5) mol l(-1) (correlation coefficient r = 0.9997) and 7.6 x 10(-9) mol l(-1), respectively. Foreign substrates effects were also investigated. The proposed method has been successfully applied to the determination of lead in the synthetic samples. The mechanism of the reaction is also studied.