Recent advances in zig-zag-fused BODIPYs

Abstract

Generally, the absorption and emission spectral ranges of BODIPYs are within the short visible region. Several strategies have been developed to tune the wavelength to cover the visible/NIR region. Among these, modifications at the “zig-zag” position of BODIPY through heteroatom incorporation or aryl unit fusion offer a great opportunity to generate diverse structures and tune the photophysical properties, so as to be suitable for application in sensing and bio-imaging. This review underlines and summarizes the recent progress of zig-zag-fused BODIPYs, concentrating on their synthetic approaches, their spectroscopic characteristics of intriguing structures, and their multiple applications in biomedicine and material science.