TICT based fluorescence turn-on hydrazine probes

Fluorescence turn-on probes PC3 and C3 with weak background emissions were developed for hydrazine sensing. The aldehyde and dicyanovinyl groups were used as the recognition units for PD and C3, respectively. Because of low reactivity of the aldehyde group, the fluorescence of PC3 was enhanced by only ca. 93 folds upon addition of a large amount of 1646 eq. hydrazine. In contrast, 0 exhibited fluorescence enhancement by ca. 239 folds upon addition of only 1.3 eq. hydrazine, and thus it showed high sensitivity towards hydrazine, with the detection limit of 7 ppb. In aqueous systems, it also works well with improved selectivity for hydrazine over CN-. The weak fluorescence of PC3 and 0 can be ascribed to twisted intramolecular charge transfer (TICT) processes by the combination of the bulky diphenylamino and 9-anthryl units, which were well demonstrated by theoretical calculations, viscosity dependent fluorescence, and fluorescence decay behaviour. Addition of hydrazine induced the disappearance of the TICT deactivation pathway, resulting in the observed fluorescence enhancement. It can be concluded that the combination of the bulky diphenylamino and 9-anthryl units is an effective approach for developing fluorescence turn-on hydrazine probes based on the TICT mechanism. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.