Dimethylamino naphthalene-based fluorescent probes for hydrogen sulfide detection and living cell imaging.

Hydrogen sulfide shows great importance in various physiological and biochemical processes. The development of fluorescence probes for facile and efficient detection of H ₂ S has attracted increasing attention of researchers. Herein, we synthesized two fluorescence probes based on simple naphthalene structure for detection of H ₂ S. Upon reaction with H ₂ S, the probe DN-DM exhibited a red fluorescence emission with large Stokes shift. The probe showed high sensitivity, pH insensitivity and good selectivity for H ₂ S over other analytes including common biothiols. The detection mechanism was based on the thiolysis of the dinitrophenyl ether moiety, which was confirmed by ¹ H NMR spectral analysis. The DFT calculation was also performed for a deeper understanding of the photophysical properties. In addition, these probes showed good cell-membrane permeability and could be utilized for detection of H ₂ S in living cells.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2019. Published by Elsevier B.V.)