Turn-on fluorescent probe with aggregation-induced emission characteristics for polyazoles

Polyazoles are a class of explosives and the synthetic precursors of antibiotics. The detection of polyazole compounds is quite important but challenging. In this work, a novel fluorescent probe with AIE-activity was designed and synthesized. The probe displays dramatic turn-on behavior and visible distinguishability by the naked eye in the presence of 5-nitro-2,4-dihydro-3H-1,2,4-triazole-3-one (NTO) with a limit of detection (LOD) of 7 nM in a water/THF mixture. In addition, the probe shows a high sensitivity to most of the polyazoles, while other common explosives and imidazoles induced a fairly low interference effect, which makes the probe potentially applicable in monitoring water quality.