A facile AIE fluorescent probe with large Stokes shift for the detection of Cd2+ in real water samples and living cells

A facile AIE fluorescent probe which exhibits a large stokes shift of 202 nm has been successfully developed. The probe can recognize Cd 2+ with high selectivity by inhibiting ESIPT process, leading to observably blue-shift and significantly enhanced fluorescence with the colour changed from green to cyan. Excitedly, the recognition of Cd 2+ is completely free from the interference of Zn 2+ and Cd 2+ could be quantitatively detected in aqueous solution with the detection limit of 1.5 × 10 −7  M. Moreover, the probe has been successfully applied to detect Cd 2+ in real water samples and image Cd 2+ in living cells.