ISSN print edition: 0366-6352 ISSN electronic edition: 1336-9075 Registr. No.: MK SR 9/7 Published monthly

A naked eye fluorescent chemosensor for Zn²⁺ based on triphenylamine derivative and its bioimaging in live cells

Bo Liu, Yanhong Tan, Qinghua Hu, Yuyuan Wang, Xumeng Wu, Qiuxiang Huang, Wenfeng Zhang, Ming Zheng, and Hongqing Wang

University of South China, Hengyang, People’s Republic of China

E-mail: huqinghua2007@163.com

Abstract: A novel Zn²⁺ fluorescent probe Nʹ-((4′-(diphenylamino)-4-hydroxy-[1,1′-biphenyl]-3-yl)methylene)-2-hydroxybenzohydrazide (TPA-HPH) with a larger Stokes shift (210 nm) was designed and synthesized, which was seen to be highly selective and sensitive to Zn²⁺ ion over other metal ions in the system of MeCN:H₂O (V/V = 6:4, pH = 7.0). Meanwhile, it was observed that the TPA-HPH solution changed from colorless to yellow by “naked eye” when Zn²⁺ was added. Under optimized conditions, the fluorescence intensity of the probe showed a good linear relationship with Zn²⁺ ion concentration in the range of 0–10 μM with a low detection limit of 7.3 × 10⁻¹⁰ M. The fluorescent mechanism was proposed. Most importantly, TPA-HPH could realize on-site monitor and live cell imaging for Zn²⁺ ion.

Keywords: Fluorescent probe ; Triphenylamine ; Zn²⁺ ; Cell imaging 

Full paper is available at www.springerlink.com.

DOI: 10.1007/s11696-019-00853-3

Chemical Papers 73 (12) 3123–3134 (2019)