Two Novel coumarin-based fluorescent probes for the detection of Cu2+ and biological applications

Abstract Large accumulations of copper (Cu) ions in the human body may cause damage, including organ and brain damage. In recent years, studies have proven that a large accumulation of Cu ions can lead to Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease, therefore it is great important to develop novel strategies for detecting trace Cu in environmental and biological samples. In this work, we designed two new coumarin-based colorimetric and fluorescent probes HQ1 and HQ2. These two probes could selectively respond to Cu2+ with obvious color and fluorescence changes, and the presence of other metal ions had no effect on these changes. The two probes also exhibited high sensitivity for Cu2+, with a detection limit as low as 1.81×10-8 M/ 1.57×10-8 M. Notably, the two probes showed potential practical applications and were successfully used for detecting Cu2+ in a test strip, A549 cells and living zebrafish larvae.