Physicochemical studies of some novel Y-shaped imidazole derivatives--a sensitive chemisensor.

Some novel Y-shaped imidazole derivatives were developed for highly sensitive chemisensors for transition metal ions. A prominent fluorescence enhancement was found in the presence of transition metal ions such as Hg(2+), Pb(2+) and Cu(2+) and it is due to the suppression of radiationless transitions from the n-π* state in the chemisensors. The HOMO-LUMO energies, electric dipole moment (μ) and the first-hyperpolarizability (β) values of the investigated molecule have been studied theoretically which reveal that the synthesized molecules have microscopic non-linear optical (NLO) behaviour with non-zero values.