Parthenin: targeted isolation, characterisation and its application as a fluorescent probe for ammonia sensing

Natural products representing an important class of organic compounds exhibiting immense potential applications. Keeping in view of diverse applications of natural products we have isolated parthenin compound from <i>Parthenium hysterophorosus</i> using column chromatography. The extracted compounds were subjected to initial screening through FT-IR spectroscopy depicting the presence of different functionalities in the compound. The compound have been screened for optical studies in solid phase depicting the presence of transitions (π-π and n-π) with characteristics optical band gap of 2.3 eV. The thermal studies indicate that the compound is anhydrous and stable upto 300°C beyond which degradation starts. The compound being soluble in various polar and non-polar solvents were investigated for solvatochromism and it has been observed that polar solvents enhances the absorption behaviour compared to non-polar solvents which include water, MeOH, DMF, the λ_max corresponding to water, MeOH and DMF are depicted as 290, 230 and 270 nm, respectively. The compound were explored for the sensing of NH₃ molecule for which the limit of detection was 1.2 × 10^-3 M. The isolated compound were characterised by ¹H and ¹³C-NMR spectroscopy.