The United States Environmental Protection Agency has targeted 13 metallic ions as particularly dangerous in aqueous waste streams. We have synthesized a group of luminescent chemosensory materials which incorporate multiple, pendant transition metal receptors to a poly(arylene ethynylene) polymer (see below). The sensitivity of these systems is dramatically enhanced over traditional fluorescent sensors due to rapid exciton mobility along the conjugated polymer backbone that results in the quenching of multiple fluorescent sites by a single binding event. We have demonstrated that "

these molecular wire chemosensors are responsive to a number of transition metal ions, including Ni²⁺, Co²⁺, Cr⁶⁺, Zn²⁺, Cd²⁺, and Mn²⁺.   Here we describe a mathematical model which describes the dynamic, non-linear quenching response as a combination of static complexation and energy transfer.  This analysis provides new insights into the future design of luminescent conjugated sensors.