Dual Functional Fluorescent Chemosensor for discriminative detection of Ni2+ and Al3+ -ions and its imaging in living cells

A binaphthyl derived fluorescent probe (S)-1 was developed for dual channel detection of Ni2+ and Al3+ ions. The sensing of Ni2+ and Al3+ ions takes place by two pathways: (i) fluorescent turn-on response via the blocking of the photoinduced electron transfer process and (ii) red-shifted fluorescent enrichment via the intramolecular charge transfer process. All these findings were supported by NMR, mass spectrometry, and theoretical studies. In addition, sensing of Al3+ ions was successfully applied into live cells for bioimaging studies and logic gate applications.