A phenothiazine coumarin based fluorescent probe with AIE feature for real-time detecting lysosomal ClO– in living cell

A new phenothiazine coumarin based probe WX-Lyso for detection of ClO– was developed. The probe showed obvious aggregation-induced emission (AIE) characteristic and exhibited a highly selective and sensitive turn-on fluorescence signal at 544 nm for ClO– with a large Stokes shift of 144 nm. The limit of detection (LOD) of ClO– was measured as low as 0.99 μM and a good line equation was obtained in the 0–50 μM concentration range. The detection mechanism was elucidated FT-IR, ESI-MS analysis and DFT. Furthermore, the probe had been demonstrated successfully has good lysosomal-targeting and high-contrast imaging abilities, which has the potential to become a new chemical tool and provide help for detecting ClO– in living systems.