Rapid detection of hydrazine in almost wholly water solution and in living cells with a new colorimetric and fluorescent turn-on probe

The detection of hydrazine is of particular interest given its toxicity and high levels of use. In this paper, a new fluorescent probe was developed for rapid detection of hydrazine. This probe is chemically masked with a 2-fluoro-5-nitro-benzoic ester motif as a new reaction site for hydrazine. More importantly, unlike most probes for hydrazine in the literature that need to use high levels of organic solvents, this probe displays a fast colorimetric and fluorescent turn-on response for hydrazine with high selectivity and sensitivity in almost wholly water solution under mild conditions. The detection limit of this probe for hydrazine is about 0.10 mu M (similar to 3 ppb) with a linear range of 0-20 mu M. Further investigation showed that this probe could be used to develop an easy-to-prepare and easy-to-detect paper test strip for cheap and effective visual detection of hydrazine. In addition, this probe can be used to image hydrazine in living cells.