A luminescent bimetallic iridium(III) complex for ratiometric tracking intracellular viscosity

A luminescent bimetallic iridium probe C10 was developed through a long soft carbon chain linkage to achieve ratiometric detection of viscosity. C10 features high sensitivity and selectivity for viscosity. More importantly, C10 is living cell permeable and can be employed to distinguish cancer cells from normal cells and track viscosity changes during MCF-7 cell apoptosis.