An Intramolecular Charge Transfer and Aggregation Induced Emission Enhancement Fluorescent Probe Based on 2‐Phenyl‐1,2,3‐triazole for Highly Selective and Sensitive Detection of Homocysteine and Its Application in Living Cells

Summary of main observation and conclusion In this work, a new simple and readily synthesized turn‐on probe 2‐(4‐anthracene‐9‐yl‐phenyl)‐ 2H‐[1,2,3]triazole‐4‐carbaldehyde (APTC) was legitimately designed towards homocysteine (Hcy). Moreover, APTC has excellent optical properties such as intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) and aggregation induced emission enhancement (AIEE) characteristics, indicating its extensive application potentiality. What's more, APTC displayed rapid, high selectivity and specificity towards homocysteine over cysteine/glutathione. The detection limit of APTC for Hcy was as low as 2.198×10–8 mol·L–1, and the response time was only 5 min. APTC has been successfully applied to detect Hcy in silica gel plates and living cells, which indicates that APTC has good stability and biocompatibility as a selective probe for Hcy. Finally, the mechanism was studied using 1H NMR titration experiments and mass spectrometry.