A new phenothiazine-based fluorescent probe for detection of hydrazine with naked-eye color change properties

A new fluorescent probe (PAC) based on phenothiazine was designed and synthesized for the detection of hydrazine (N2H4), which uses methyl cyanoacetate as the recognition group and phenothiazine as the fluorescent chromophore. The Stoke shift of probe PAC at the presence of hydrazine reached to 120 nm and the detection limit of probe PAC performed as 6.7 ppb. PAC had AIE properties and provided with the functions of naked-eye recognition. The DFT and TD-DFT calculations exhibited that the probes of PAC performed good responses to hydrazine. In addition, cell imaging showed that the probe PAC effectively recognized the hydrazine in HepG2 cells and stained the cells green.