A high performance 2-hydroxynaphthalene Schiff base fluorescent chemosensor for Al and its applications in imaging of living cells and zebrafish in vivo.

Developing high performance fluorescent chemo-sensors for in vitro and in vivo Al detection is highly desirable, because Al accumulation has been involved to various diseases. Herein, we report a highly selective and sensitive Schiff base fluorescent probe, HL, based on 2-hydroxynaphthalene, which can recognize aluminum ions and exhibit an "off-on" mode with high selectivity in methanol solutions. The detection limit of the probe for Al is as low as 10 M which was determined by fluorescent titration. The high selectivity and high sensitivity of HL for Al are attributed to the inhibition of ESIPT. Additionally, the distribution of intracellular Al ions could be observed under confocal fluorescence microscopy. Moreover, we also applied HL for in vivo detection of Al ions in living zebrafish larvae.