A rapid and highly sensitive fluorescent imaging materials for thiophenols

Abstract

Thiophenols, a class of toxic and polluting compounds, are widely used in industrial production. Meanwhile, some aliphatic thiols play important roles in living organisms. Therefore, the development of probes for specific thiophenol detection is of great importance. Herein, a novel highly sensitive and selective ‘off-on’ fluorescent probe for detecting thiophenols has been developed by an ICT mechanism through a rational design. The probe displays a large Stokes shift (140 nm) and 60-fold fluorescence intensity enhancement. More importantly, the probe features a rapid signal response time (within 100 s), a good linearity range and the detection limit is as low as 13 nM. In addition, the ability of the probe to detect thiophenols in living cells (HepG2 cells) via an enhancement of the fluorescence has also been demonstrated.