Liu Cai, Liu Lü, Mengying Wang
2018
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Journal
Chinese Journal of Organic Chemistry
Abstract
A series of novel imidazole derivatives containing indole or carbazole unit were efficiently synthesized via one-pot reaction of benzil/9,10-phenanthraquinone, indole-3-carbaldehyde/carbazole-3-carbaldehyde and ammonium acetate utilizing glacial acetic acid as solvent and catalyst. The effects of selection and amount of solvents, molar ratio of the reagents, and temperature on the reactions have been surveyed. The photophysical properties of the synthesized products were also investi-gated, and two compounds possessing structural characteristics and pH-sensitive were selected as pH fluorescent probes. Fur-thermore, the fluorescence imaging of MCF-7 cells in different pH environments in the presence of the probe 2-(9-benzyl-9 H -carbazol-3-yl)-1 H -4,5-diphenylimidazole ( 2d ) or 2-(9-benzyl-9 H -carbazol-3-yl)-1 H -phenanthro[9,10- d ]imidazole ( 4 ) was detected, and the results revealed that the two probes show promising potential to be used in detecting pH changes in living cells as pH fluorescent probes.