Fluorogenic recognition of Zn2+, Cd2+ by a new Pyrazoline-based Multi-Analyte chemosensor and its application in live cell imaging.

[Display omitted] • A novel pyrazoline fluorescent probe 1 was synthesized. • It can be used to detect Zn2+/ Cd2+ with high sensitivity and high selectivity. • It has good fluorescence reversibility. • It can be applied to fluorescent Zn2+/ Cd2+ imaging in living cells. A novel multi-response pyrazoline-based fluorescent probe 1 was designed and synthesized with a very simple molecular structure, which exhibited high sensitivity for detecting Zn2+ and Cd2+ in ethanol aqueous solution state based on the dissuasion of intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) and chelation-enhanced fluorescence (CHEF) effect. The binding modes of the complexes were determined to have 1:1 complexation stoichiometry and the binding constants were calculated to be 1.284 × 104 M−1 for Zn2+ and 4.313 × 103 M−1 for Cd2+ using the nonlinear curve-fitting method. Zn2+ and Cd2+ sensor have high anti-interference ability. Under optimal conditions, the detection limits were determined to be 0.9274 μM for Zn2+ and 0.8158 μM for Cd2+. Notably, the probe was found to have good biological compatibility and was employed to detect Zn2+/ Cd2+ in living Hela cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]