An excess of Al 3+ will lead to biological disorders and even many diseases. Therefore, detecting the levels of Al 3+ in the human body has drawn great attention for health monitoring. The fluorescence method has been broadly applied because of high sensitivity, real-time detection, and intracellular imaging. In this work, a new probe with "turn-on" fluorescence based on Schiff base derivative, 3,6-imine-triphenylamine-(9-ethyl) carbazole (ITEC), has been successfully synthesized and studied. The high selectivity and sensitivity of ITEC to Al 3+ were verified by fluorescence spectra and the detection limit was 2.19 nmol/L. A 1:2 stoichiometry of ITEC-Al 3+ was obtained by the 1 H NMR spectra and Job's plot. Furthermore, ITEC was successfully applied to the detection of Al 3+ with different concentrations in living HeLa cells. The analog experiments about nature contamination of Al 3+ in cells and real samples were finished.Currently, Schiff bases compounds are vastly recognized as fluorescence probes for metal ions with the high sensitivity, good selectivity, and high excitation coefficients, but a lot of them displayed fluorescence "on-off" behavior [24][25][26], which is a disadvantage for the visualization study. In recent years, a few "off-on" fluorescence probes have been developed, but the probes applied to detect Al 3+ in living cells and real samples were scarce [27][28][29][30]. Hence, it is very meaningful to develop "off-on" probes for Al 3+ monitoring in real application [31].In this manuscript, we reported a feasible method to synthesize a novel Schiff base, 3,6-imine-triphenylamine-(9-ethyl) carbazole (ITEC), as a "turn-on" fluorescence probe for selective detection of Al 3+ . The ITEC was further applied to detect Al 3+ in living cells. In addition, the experiments of Al 3+ detection in the real sample have been carried out.
Experimental
Materials and InstrumentationCarbazole, triphenylamine, and Palladium/C catalysts were purchased from Aladdin. All other experimental materials were derived from the local commercial suppliers. All materials were not further purified. 1 H NMR spectra were measured on a Bruker Avance 400 spectrometer. The electrospray ionization (ESI) mass spectra were recorded using an Agilent-6510-Q-TOF spectrometer. A UV-3600 spectrophotometer and a Thermo Scientific Nicolet IS10 Spectrometer were used to measure the UV-visible absorption spectra and Infrared spectra. Fluorescence spectra were obtained using a Hitachi F-7000 Fluorescence Spectrophotometer. The fluorescence images in living cells were obtained by an Olympus FV300 confocal microscope.
Synthesis of ITECIntermediates M1-M4 were synthesized according to the literature reports [32,33] and the detailed procedures were described in supporting information. The synthesis of 3,6-imine-triphenylamine-(9-ethyl) carbazole (ITEC) is shown in Scheme 1. Scheme 1. The synthesis route of 3,6-imine-triphenylamine-(9-ethyl) carbazole (ITEC).