Research Progress on Naphthalimide Fluorescent Probes

Naphthalimide derivatives are attracting increasing attention as fluorescent probes due to their excellent modifiability and photophysical properties. Their large, rigid coplanar structures and conjugated systems enable easy generation of fluorescence. The imide units and bromonaphthalene functionality offer facile and concise modification pathways in preparing amenable probes for different metal cations, anions, small molecules, and organelles. Therefore, naphthalimide probes have great potential for application in research fields, such as analytical chemistry, cell biology, and clinical diagnosis. This review covers recent developments in naphthalimide‐based fluorescent probes. The versatile naphthalimide core is commonly used in detecting metal cations, inorganic ions, and some molecules. The latent capacity of indicating organelles is also included in this paper.