A rapid and selective fluorescent probe with a large Stokes shift for the detection of hydrogen sulfide.

We have successfully developed a new green-emitting H2S fluorescence probe employing a 2,4-dinitrophenyl ether moiety as the sensing group based on 3'-formyl-4'-hydroxybiphenyl-4-carbonitrile. This probe displayed a rapid (2 min), sensitive (the detection limit was 0.18 μM) and selective with a large Stokes shift (183 nm) in response to H2S, which was beneficial for fluorescence sensing and cell imaging studies. Moreover, this probe can qualitatively and quantitatively detect H2S with a good linearity (R2 = 0.9991). Importantly, this probe had been used for the detection of H2S in living MDA-MB-231 cells with good performance.