Malononitrile as the 'double-edged sword' of passivation-activation regulating two ICT to highly sensitive and accurate ratiometric fluorescent detection for hypochlorous acid in biological system

Hypochlorous acid (HOCl) as one of the most important reactive oxygen species in the organism, its role is more and more recognized. In fact, in recent years, various HOCl fluorescent probes have been developed unprecedentively based on various mechanisms. However, because most of the mechanisms are based on the oxidation characteristics of HOCl, the excellent detection performance of probes depends on the activation ability of some functional groups to reaction sites. The C=C bond in the probe is often oxidized by HOCl to realize HOCl detection. However, due to the break of conjugated structure, the probe often present as a quenchable or turning on fluorescence emission. In this work, malononitrile was introduced as the double-edged sword of passivation-activation when in HOCl fluorescent probe was designed. Passivation-activation regulated two ICT (Intermolecular Charge Transfer, ICT) processes to ratiometric fluorescent detection for HOCl. Highly sensitive and accurate detection realized efficient application in biological imaging.