Tetraphenylethylene-cholesterol conjugates as sensitive aggregation-induced emission probe for selective detection of explosive FOX-7

The frequent use of explosives puts enormous pressure on the environment and poses a potential threat to human health. Fluorescent probes , which can detect explosives quickly and accurately, have attracted increasing attention of researchers, but there are few reports about the detection of various novel explosives. In this work, a novel probe CST was synthesized through Cholesterol succinate and tetraphenylethylene derivative. Fluorescence spectra showed that CST had a typical aggregation-induced emission (AIE) effect in THF/H 2 O solution, and explosive FOX-7 could effectively quench this fluorescence without being affected by other explosives or ions, with the quenching constant of 0.799 × 10 5  M −1 . The filter paper and cotton rods prepared with the probe could detect FOX-7 specifically, which also provided the possibility for practical application on the battlefield.