Novel design of near-infrared fluorescent sensors for the detection of Hg 2+ in living cells and real water samples.

Mercury sensing and imaging in the bio-system is essential for comprehending its toxicity and therapies. Based on the merocyanine scaffold, we designed and synthesized two novel near-infrared (NIR) fluorescent probes for detecting Hg ²⁺ . The release of chloro-substituted merocyanine structure on the probe CyHg-Cl enables fluorescence enhancement rapidly by introducing Hg ²⁺ . In addition, the probe CyHg-Cl exhibits NIR emission and a low detection limit of 0.59 µM. Finally, the probe CyHg-Cl was used to detect Hg ²⁺ in live cells and real water samples.
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.
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