In view of thiophenol contaminants and their adverse effects in environment, it is valuable to develop an effective probe for thiophenols. Based on a large Stokes shift (126 nm) NIR-illuminant platform (Compound 2), we developed a colorimetric and “off-on” near-infrared (NIR) fluorescent probe (NIRP) to selectively discriminate thiophenols from various analytes including aliphatic thiols. NIRP is dually quenched (ICT blocked quenching and PET quenching), thus achieving large signal-to-noise ratio and high sensitivity for thiophenol detection. For the first time, the unique NIR-illuminant phenomenon of 2′ and the d-PET quenching process on NIRP are revealed by the density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Moreover, we demonstrate the practical applications of NIRP, including the quantitative thiophenol detection in environmental water samples and NIR fluorescent imaging of thiophenol in HeLa cells.

考虑到硫酚污染物及其对环境的不利影响，开发一种有效的硫酚探针是很有价值的。基于大型Stokes位移（126 nm）NIR照明平台（化合物2），我们开发了比色和“关闭”的近红外（NIR）荧光探针（NIRP），可从各种分析物（包括脂肪族硫醇）中选择性区分出苯酚。NIRP进行了双重淬灭（ICT封闭淬灭和PET淬灭），从而实现了大的信噪比和对苯硫酚检测的高灵敏度。NIRP首次实现2'的独特NIR发光现象和d-PET淬灭过程由密度泛函理论（DFT）计算得出。此外，我们展示了NIRP的实际应用，包括在环境水样品中定量检测苯酚和HeLa细胞中苯酚的NIR荧光成像。