Novel triphenylamine-based fluorescent chemo-sensors for fast detection of thiophenols in vitro and in vivo

Abstract A novel chemo-sensor based on triphenylamine derivative Probe-TPA for thiophenols (C6H5SH, p-NH2-C6H4SH, p-OH-C6H4SH) detection was presented in this work. The target dye Probe-TPA displayed high selectivity and extremely fast response toward thiophenols in DMSO/PBS buffer (5/5, v/v) solution in the presence of other competitive species (such as K+, Na+, Ni2+, Fe3+, S2−, HS−, SO42−, SO32−, NaClO, H2O2, GSH, Cys, Hcy, etc.). The sensing property for thiophenols was studied by UV–Visible, fluorescence spectrophotometric analyses and DFT/TD-DFT calculations, those results indicated that the sensor Probe-TPA possessed high anti-interference ability, excellent sensitivity, higher specifity, dramatically “naked-eye” fluorescence enhancement (almost 200-folds) under 365 nm UV lamp, especially immediate response speed (within 15 s). In extended application aspect, the fluorescent chemo-sensor Probe-TPA could provide a new method of analysis to detect of thiophenol in real water samples and visualize monitoring in live cells with remarkable fluorescence variation.