Multifunctional lipophilic purines: a coping strategy for anti-counterfeiting, lipid droplet imaging and latent fingerprint development

Abstract

Nowadays, multifunctional materials based on fluorescent small molecules have bright prospects for the development of materials science. However, those materials, based on purine derivatives in particular, still face challenges and need to be further explored. In this study, a new multifunctional small molecule (CDP) based on the purine skeleton was readily synthesized, and its lipophilicity and fluorescence properties were improved by introducing dodecyl groups and carbazole groups. CDP could not only be assembled as anti-counterfeiting inks with waterproofing, ideal light stability and good fluorescence contrast, but also be applied in lipid droplet imaging of living cells. More importantly, CDP provided a simple, efficient, and widely applicable visualization method of latent fingerprints and achieved information extraction down to a minutiae level of latent fingerprints on multiple substrates. Overall, the present work supplied a new strategy for the development of multifunctional fluorescent molecular materials in molecular design and practical applications.