Chapter 5 - BODIPY Dyes

Abstract

Boron dipyrromethene (BODIPY) dyes are a well-known class of fluorophores that have been widely used as laser dyes, fluorescent labels in fluorescence imaging, and indicator dyes in sensor applications (Loudet and Burgess, 2007; Boens et al., 2012) [1,2]. The fluorescent dye BODIPY (4,4-difluoro-4-bora-3a,4a-diaza-s-indacene) was first synthesized as early as 1968 by Treibs and Kreuzer [3]. BODIPY dyes show outstanding photophysical properties such as a high molar extinction coefficient (ε) of absorbance, high fluorescence quantum yield, narrow emission bandwidths, and excellent photostability. Another major attraction of these dyes is their rich functionalization chemistry, allowing practically unlimited structural modification, which leads to sophisticated dyes with fine-tuned chemical and spectroscopic properties (Lakshmi et al., 2015; Boens et al., 2015) [4,5]. BODIPY has been intensively investigated during the past two decades and now it has become one of the fundamental building blocks for fluorescence and optoelectronic-related functional materials (Nepomnyashchii and Bard, 2012) [6]. In this chapter, the synthesis and applications of BODIPY dyes are presented.