A dicyanoisophorone-based near-infrared fluorescent probe and its application for detecting thiophenols in water and living cells

Abstract

We report herein a new dicyanoisophorone-based colorimetric and near-infrared (NIR) fluorescent probe for rapid detection of thiophenols. This probe possesses a remarkable large Stokes shift (208 nm) and works in almost pure aqueous solution under mild conditions. More importantly, it displays a rapid, highly selective and sensitive dual colorimetric and NIR fluorescent turn-on signal responses for thiophenols and allows the detection of thiophenols in the presence of analytes including amino acids, biothiols and aliphatic thiols. Moreover, the fluorescence of this probe at 655 nm displays a good linear relationship with the thiophenol concentration ranging from 0 to 20 μM, and the detection limit is as low as 12 nM. Furthermore, the practicability of this new probe has been successfully proved by detection of thiophenol in real water samples and bioimaging of thiophenol in living cells.