A novel technique for the determination of the hydroxyl radical is described in this paper. The method employed the reaction of hydroxyl radical with dimethyl sulfoxide to generate a methyl radical quantitatively, which then coupled with the nitroxide linked naphthalene and led to a large increase in fluorescence intensity. The proposed method was demonstrated to be capable of detecting hydroxyl radicals generated in the Fenton systems. It proved to be a simple and sensitive technique for the determination of hydroxyl radicals.
