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A Versatile Aggregation‐induced Emission Fluorescent Probe for Visible Detection of pH

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Abstract

By tactfully structuring a luminescent molecule as an accurate pH probe with aggregation-induced emission (AIE) feature, it is significant to overcome aggregation-caused quenching of emitted light in practice. Herein, we present a simple AIE-active fluorescence probe for pH detection on the basis of intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) with wide response range and high sensitivity reaction. The donor-acceptor-donor (D-A-D) style probe utilized a conjugated structural hybrid of the electron-withdrawing nitrile group and electron-donating hydroxyl as well as dimethylamino groups for fluorescent platform. The AIE-active probe possesses good fluorescence under water fraction up to 90% in mixed MeOH/water system. Furthermore, it can be used in profiling and visualization of pH detection in MeOH/water system at fw = 90% under UV 365 nm lamp. What’s more, the probe can be employed to be a broad range test paper of pH detection, paving the way for low-cost practical applications.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the financial support from the Undergraduate Innovation Program in Neijiang Normal University (No. X2020059).

Funding

The study was supported by the Undergraduate Innovation Program in Neijiang Normal University (No. X2020059).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Neijiang Normal University, 641100, Neijiang, P. R. China

    Meihui Chen, Yi Ren, Huan Liu, Qian Jiang, Jing Zhang & Mingguang Zhu

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  1. Meihui Chen
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  2. Yi Ren
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  3. Huan Liu
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  4. Qian Jiang
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  5. Jing Zhang
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Contributions

M. C.: experiments and data treatment; Y. R.: synthesis of the pH probe; H. L.: structural characterization of the pH probe; Q. J.: calculation of density functional theory (DFT); J. Z.: some measurements of fluorescence; M. Z.: study design and writing of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Mingguang Zhu.

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Chen, M., Ren, Y., Liu, H. et al. A Versatile Aggregation‐induced Emission Fluorescent Probe for Visible Detection of pH. J Fluoresc 31, 475–485 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10895-020-02669-x

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