The development of molecular receptors for anion recognition has become an important aspect of supramolecular chemistry. In this thesis, we focused our attention to the study of systems for fluoride recognition in water. Fluoride is indeed an anion of interest due to its implication in environmental and health related issues. Furthermore, its small size and high hydration energy make its recognition in water particularly challenging.<p>Most of the synthetic systems reported for fluoride recognition have been extensively studied in organic solvents (DMSO, acetonitrile) using tetrabutylammonium fluoride (TBAF) as the source of fluoride. In many cases, titra- tion behaviours are observed that cannot be ascribed to a classical 1:1 binding isotherm, deprotonation problems of Brønsted-Lowry acid type of receptors aside. In the first part of our thesis we investigated, using a uranyl-salophen re- ceptor which recognizes fluoride via Lewis Acide/Base interactions, the origin of the unusual titration behaviour. Via UV/vis, 19F and 1H NMR spectroscopies, we have been able to highlight that the equilibrium between the fluoride and the corresponding bihalide ion, HF−2 ,which is inevitably generated along with the hydroxide anion in situ due to trace amounts of water, can be at the ori- gin of this singular behaviour. Our results put to light that when undertaking titrations with fluoride in DMSO, the fluoride–bihalide equilibrium can affect the data and that the latter species can even be the dominating species at low TBAF concentrations. When varying the solvent from DMSO to acetonitrile, the s-shape titration curves observed by UV/vis are no longer observed for the uranyl-salophene receptor that we studied. The fluoride-bifluoride equilibrium is still present but both of the anions generated in this process are recognised by the uranyl-salophene receptor with similar affinity constants above 10^6 M−1.<p>The second part of our work was devoted to finding ways to solubilize anion receptors that are efficient in organic solvents, into an aqueous environment. Two approaches were investigated: (i) grafting of the receptors onto silica nanoparticles and (ii) the micellar incorporation of the receptors. For the first strategy, we developed two silylated urea-based receptors. These receptors were first studied in organic solvents (DMSO and/or acetonitrile) where they showed selectivity, among halides, towards fluoride. Once grafted on the silica nanoparticles, due to the fact that hydroxyl groups and solvent molecules are present in the silica matrix, fluoride recognition was not possible.<p>We explored it with different simple H-bond based urea receptors in the second srategy. With the cationic surfactants, cetyl trimethyl ammonium chloride and bromide, the counter-ions of the micelles interfere with the fluoride recognition. With the neutral surfactant triton X-100, the incorporation of the anion receptors proved to be difficult. Moreover, the variations observed in the UV/vis spectra upon titrations were too small to be able to make any conclusions about fluoride recognition. / Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The development of selective and sensitive sensors for anionic species in water is a growing field of research. In particular, the detection of fluoride in aqueous samples is of great interest because of health related problems attributed to this anion. Furthermore its small size and its high hydration energy make it a particularly <p>challenging species to recognize in water. <p>Uranyl-salophen receptors have shown to be good receptors for this anion in organic solvents due to their hard Lewis acid character which makes them good binders for the hard Lewis base fluoride. However they are not water soluble. <p>The incorporation of uranyl-salophen receptors 1-3 within cationic micelles (CTABr and CTACl) will make them “water-compatible” and give us the possibility to study the behaviour of these system in water. The 3 receptors shown <p>in figure 1 were studied in this thesis. Preliminary work had already been reported on receptor 1 in CTABr micelles. Binding affinities studies showed that these receptors have binding constants for fluoride of the order of 104 M−1 which is two orders of magnitude higher than <p>the value obtained for the same receptors in a less competitive solvent such as methanol. This suggests that the micellar environment has an effect, not only on the solubility of the receptors in water, but also for the binding process. <p>Physico-chemical studies were undertaken on the system in order to obtain some structural informations. Dynamic Light Scattering experiments showed an increase in the size of the CTABr micelles upon receptor’s incorporation but not on the CTACl ones. <p>NMR studies, including chemical shift variation measurements, nOe and Paramagnetic Relaxation Enhancement (PRE) experiments, were undertaken in order to analyse the location and orientation of the receptors in the micelles. Results indicate that receptor 1 is located at the micellar surface, in CTABr micelles and a little deeper in CTACl micelles, orienting the receptors binding site towards the exterior of the micelle. Receptor 2 is more buried inside the micelles compared to receptor 1 but with a similar orientation. Receptor 3 is the most deeply buried <p>in the micelles, and the experiments suggests that no preferential orientation is adopted. <p>A systematic study of the factors affecting PRE measurements was also undertaken showing the dependency of this measurements on the surfactant concentration, the nature of the counterion and the ionic force. A method, based on the normalization of the relaxivity values to the value obtained for the micelle polar head is proposed in order to avoid all the variations due to the experimental conditions and thus enabling the comparison of different systems. / Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished