Cyanide-sensitive fluorescent probes.

We characterize the response of several boronic acid containing fluorophores, which are widely used for sugar determination, towards aqueous cyanide. In two recent reports we have shown that boronic acid containing fluorophores can be used to sense aqueous cyanide through physiological safeguard levels. In this report we show that our new sensing mechanism is not just specific to our recently reported probes, but is indeed generic to the boronic acid moiety itself. Subsequently a wide range of cyanide-sensitive probes can now be realized, offering several modalities for fluorescence based cyanide sensing such as: intensity, lifetime, ratiometric, polarization and modulation fluorescence sensing.