Crown-ether-bridging bis-diphenylacrylonitrile macrocycle: The effective fluorescence sensor for oxytetracycline

Abstract This work reported the novel organic fluorescence sensor for oxytetracyline based on a novel AIE-macrocycle. By “1 + 1” condensation of diphenylacrylonitrile bearing OH groups and its derivative with terminal Cl groups, the crown-ether-bridging bis-diphenylacrylonitrile macrocycle (CBP) was prepared in quantitative yield of 38 %. CBP exhibited strong AIE fluorescence at 430−550 nm in aqueous media. It presented good selective sensing ability for oxytetracyline with dramatically fluorescence quenching among all kinds of ions and biomolecules. The detection limit was as low as 1.33 × 10−7 M. The sensing mechanism was confirmed as 1:1 stoichiometric ratio. This detection ability was successfully applied on sensing oxytetracycline in test strip and biological samples. Moreover, CBP displayed good sensing ability for oxytetracycline in living cells based on its good living-cell fluorescence imaging property. This paper not only provided the novel organic fluorescence sensor for oxytetracyline, but also opened a new strategy based on AIE-macrocycle to construct the novel sensor for complex biomolecules.