Fluorescence probe with aggregation induced emission effect and application for colormetric detection of endogenous and exogenous hypochlorite

In this work, a colormetric fluorescent probe named NMH, which exhibited aggregation-induced emission (AIE) characteristic in water/EtOH binary solvent was developed based on 2-hydrazinobenzothiazole and 6-methoxy-2-acetonaphthone for sensing hypochlorous acid (HClO) with high selectivity and sensitivity (detection limit: 1.7 nM). Also, NMH had a strong anti-interference effect and a fluorescence color change in the solution which can be seen by the“naked eye”. Moreover, NMH could be applied to detect ClO− in tap water and test paper. In addition, cell imaging experiments showed that probe NMH could detect endogenous and exogenous ClO− in A549 cells successfully.