A Vibration-Induced-Emission-Based Fluorescent Chemosensor for the Selective and Visual Recognition of Glucose

The development of chemosensors to detect analytes in biologically relevant solutions is a challenging task . We report the synthesis of a fluorescent receptor that combines vibration-induced emission (VIE) and dynamic covalent chemistry for the detection of glucose in aqueous media. We show that the bis- 2-( N -methylaminomethyl) phenylboronic acid-decorated N , N '-diphenyl-dihydrodibenzo[ a , c ]phenazine (DPAC) receptor 1 can detect glucose and discriminat e between closely related monosaccharides including those commonly found in blood. Preliminary studies suggest monosaccharides bind to the DPAC-receptor with a 1:1 stoichiometry to produce pseudomacrocyclic complexes, which in turn leads to distinct optical changes in the fluorescent emission of the receptor for each host. Moreover, the complexation-induced change in emission can be both detected visually and quantified in a ratiometric way. Our results highlight the potential of VIE-type receptors for the development of improved tools for the quantitative determination of saccharides in biological samples where a single chemosensor can discriminate between similarly related structures in aqueous solutions.