Recent development of boronic acid-based fluorescent sensors

Abstract

As Lewis acids, boronic acids can bind with 1,2-or 1,3-diols in aqueous solution reversibly and covalently to form five or six cyclic esters, thus resulting in significant fluorescence changes. Based on this phenomenon, boronic acid compounds have been well developed as sensors to recognize carbohydrates or other substances. Several reviews in this area have been reported before, however, novel boronic acid-based fluorescent sensors have emerged in large numbers in recent years. This paper reviews new boronbased sensors from the last five years that can detect carbohydrates such as glucose, ribose and sialyl Lewis A/X, and other substances including catecholamines, reactive oxygen species, and ionic compounds. And emerging electrochemically related fluorescent sensors and functionalized boronic acid as new materials including nanoparticles, smart polymer gels, and quantum dots were also involved.By summarizing and discussing these newly developed sensors, we expect new inspiration in the design of boronic acid-based fluorescent sensors.

Molecular Design of a New Diboronic Acid for the Electrohydrodynamic Monitoring of Glucose

“…The binding‐induced change in BA acidity can induce changes in solution pH, electrostatic interactions, and surface charge. These properties may ultimately be useful for optical, conductimetric, and field‐effect transistor‐based glucose sensing . Mono boronic acids bind glucose but also other sugars, especially fructose, galactose, and ribose, which are considered interferents in practical glucose‐detection platforms.…”

A colorimetric sensor array based on natural pigments for the discrimination of saccharides

“…[6] We can only start to discriminate the saccharides by analyzing the number of hydroxyl groups and the spatial conformation of a certain hydroxyl group. [6,7] It is often necessary to use pre-existing protein-sugar interactions or light-induced electron transfer to work out the differences between fluorescence and phosphorescence signals. [8][9][10] Therefore, the design of saccharide selective sensors poses peculiarly difficult challenges in the field of supramolecular chemistry.…”

A novel boronic acid-based fluorescent sensor for selectively recognizing Fe3+ ion in real time

“…Due to the simple operation, high sensitivity and selectivity, uorescence spectroscopy has been widely applied to detect various ions (Cu 2+ , [9][10][11][12][13][14][15] Cr 3+ , 16 Hg 2+ , [17][18][19][20][21] Al 3+ , 22,23 etc. ), carbohydrates [24][25][26][27] and so on. Compared with sensing other transition metals such as Cu 2+ and Hg 2+ , there are relatively less uorescent sensors of Fe 3+ ion, which are based on derivatives of macrocyclic molecules, 2,28 rhodamines, [29][30][31][32][33][34] coumarin, [35][36][37] quinoline, 1,[38][39][40] etc.…”

“…Due to the obvious changes in uorescence aer binding, rapid recognition, good selectivity, etc. boronic acid-based uorescent sensors have been developed widely in the recognition of carbohydrates, [24][25][26][27] etc. In addition, boronic acid can also be used to sense ions, 11,17 such as Cu 2+ , Hg 2+ and so on.…”