Endowing an amphiphilic aggregation-induced emission molecule with turn-on fluorescence in both latent fingerprints development and antibiotics detection

The water-soluble aggregation-induced emission (AIE) molecule is desirable as a turn-on fluorescence probe, but it is challenging because most AIE-based molecules are lipophilic and can emit strong fluorescence in water. To address the problem, tetraphenylethene (TPE) backbones are decorated with hydrophilic pyridine ethanol-related groups, and a series of novel amphiphilic TPE-based pyridinium salts (denoted as TPE-Py-OH, TPE-2Py-2OH and TPE-4Py-4OH) are synthesized. Encouragingly, TPE-2Py-2OH aqueous solution which is almost non-emissive can be used as a bifunctional turn-on fluorescent probe for developing latent fingerprints (LFPs) and detecting antibiotics. Level 3 details in LFPs are developed via soaking/ spraying method, owing to that AIE phenomenon is activated by the combination of lipophilic part in TPE-2Py-2OH and fatty acid residues in fin-gerprints. The method is worthy to promote, because it displays the advantages of water solubility, low working concentration, ease of operation, good stability, high safety, high contrast, high sensitivity, and high selectivity. It can also response to penicillin potassium (PNG) with a detection limit of 0.18 mu M because the electrostatic interaction between TPE-2Py-2OH and PNG can mainly induce the enhanced fluorescence. This discovery pro -vides a facile approach to design more promising amphiphilic AIE-based turn-on fluorescence probes.

Automated summary

By decorating tetraphenylethene (TPE) backbones with hydrophilic pyridine ethanol-related groups, a series of novel amphiphilic TPE-based pyridinium salts were synthesized and used as water-soluble turn-on fluorescence probes for latent fingerprint development and antibiotic detection. The method has many advantages, including water solubility, low working concentration, ease of operation, good stability, high safety, high contrast, high sensitivity, and high selectivity.