Sensitive and selective detection of alcohols via fluorescence modulation

Reported herein is the selective detection of aliphatic alcohols using cyclodextrin-promoted, proximity-induced fluorescence modulation of a high-quantum yield fluorophore. This fluorescence modulation occurred when the analyte was held in close proximity to the fluorophore via non-covalent cyclodextrin–analyte–fluorophore interactions, and led to unique modulation responses for each analyte, fluorophore and cyclodextrin investigated. These changes in fluorescence were used for the generation of an array using linear discriminant analysis that successfully generated unique pattern identifiers for 99% of the investigated analytes, and could detect alcohols at micromolar concentrations. These results represent a fundamentally new detection approach for these challenging analytes, and have significant potential in the development of novel detection schemes.