Tetraphenylethylene-cholesterol conjugates as sensitive aggregation-induced emission probe for selective detection of explosive FOX-7

Abstract

The frequent use of explosives puts enormous pressure on the environment and poses a potential threat to human health. Fluorescent probes, which can detect explosives quickly and accurately, have attracted increasing attention of researchers, but there are few reports about the detection of various novel explosives. In this work, a novel probe CST was synthesized through Cholesterol succinate and tetraphenylethylene derivative. Fluorescence spectra showed that CST had a typical aggregation-induced emission (AIE) effect in THF/H2O solution, and explosive FOX-7 could effectively quench this fluorescence without being affected by other explosives or ions, with the quenching constant of 0.799 × 105 M−1. The filter paper and cotton rods prepared with the probe could detect FOX-7 specifically, which also provided the possibility for practical application on the battlefield.