Anthracene appended coumarin derivative as a Cr(iii) selective turn-on fluorescent probe for living cell imaging: a green approach towards speciation studies

Abstract

A facile one step reaction between 6-aminocoumarin and anthracene-9-carboxaldehyde has resulted in a novel fluorescent probe, 6-((anthracen-9-yl) methyleneamino)-2H-chromen-2-one (AC) which is capable of selectively detecting intracellular Cr³⁺ in contaminated living cells under a fluorescence microscope. The binding of AC with Cr³⁺ is well characterized by different spectroscopic techniques. The binding constant values in CH₃CN–water (9 : 1, v/v) and methanol–water (9 : 1, v/v) solutions have been estimated to be 1.1 × 10⁵ and 3.1 × 10⁵ respectively using the Benesi–Hildebrand equation. The detection limit for Cr³⁺ is 0.5 × 10⁻⁶ M. The developed method has been used for speciation studies in a fast and environment friendly way using least amounts of samples, non-hazardous chemicals and solvents.