Selective sensing of explosive nitro compounds via aggregation induced emission in aqueous media

The conjugated organic materials are significant applications in optical/electronic devices due to development of aggregation phenomena. The organic fluorophore molecules are usually exhibit strong fluorescence in dilute solution owing to their structural planarity. However, most of their emission nature in the solid state is partially or fully quenched by aggregation. The boron based complexes, such as N, N-, 0, 0- and N, O-chelated difluoro boron complexes are employed in OLEDs, chemo/biosensors, bioimaging, and near-infrared emitters due to their high molar absorption coefficient, large Stokes shift, high quantum yields in solutions and solid states, and photochemical stability.. The phenyl substituted BF₂ complexes of 3-methylthio enaminones are non-emission in both solid and solution state. Moreover, most commonly boron complexes are exhibits strong emission in the solution state and weak emissive in solid state due to their II-II stacking interactions. Based on the literature survey, we reported novel TPE (Tetra phenyl ethylene) based fluorescent probe such as TPENSB, which are highly emissive in solid state and aggregated solution. The probes TPENSB-l and TPENSB-2 were tested against to detection of NACs results in very high selectivity towards picric acid (PA). (author)