Analytical Sciences

A Tetraphenylethylene-based Fluorescent Chemosensor for Cu²⁺ in Aqueous Solution and Its Potential Application to Detect Histidine

Yan ZENG,* Guanxin ZHANG,** and Deqing ZHANG**

*National Engineering Laboratory for Industrial Enzymes, Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 32 West 7th Avenue, Tianjin Airport Economic Area, Tianjin 300308, P. R. China
**Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Organic Solids Laboratory, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Zhongguancun North First Street 2, Beijing 100190, P. R. China

A tetraphenylethylene-based compound with the property of aggregation-induced emission was designed and synthesized. It exhibited good sensitivity and selectivity to Cu²⁺ over other metal ions (Zn²⁺, Cd²⁺, Ba²⁺, Ni²⁺, Mg²⁺, Ca²⁺, Co²⁺, Fe³⁺, Pb²⁺, Mn²⁺, Fe²⁺, Ag⁺, K⁺, and Hg²⁺) in an aqueous solution by the “turn-off” UV-vis absorbance and fluorescence signals. More interesting, with the subsequent addition of histidine rather than other amino acids such as proline, alanine, aspartic acid, lysine, arginine, leucine, glutamine or cysteine, the complex between the compound and Cu²⁺ was disrupted, and the UV-vis absorbance and fluorescence signals were recovered, indicating that the complex from the compound and Cu²⁺ could be used as a “turn-on” fluorescent probe for histidine.

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