Some novel imidazole derivatives were developed as highly sensitive chemisensors for transition metal ions. A prominent fluorescence enhancement was found in the presence of transition metal ions such as Hg2+, Pb2+,Cu2+, Zn2+, Co2+ and Fe2+ and this was suggested to result from the suppression of radiationless transitions from the n-pi* state in the chemisensors. By OFT calculation HOMO LUMO energies were calculated, the electric dipole moment (mu) and the hyperpolarizability (beta) of the investigated molecules have been studied experimentally and also theoretically. These synthesized molecules were found to have microscopic non-linear optical (NLO) behaviour with non-zero tensor components. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.