Recent Advancements in Colorimetric and Fluorescent pH Chemosensors: From Design Principles to Applications

Abstract

Due to the immense biological significance of pH in diverse living systems, the design, synthesis, and development of pH chemosensors for pH monitoring has been a very active research field in recent times. In this review, we summarize the designing strategies, sensing mechanisms, biological and environmental applications of fluorogenic and chromogenic pH chemosensors of the last three years (2018–2020). We categorized these pH probes into seven types based on their applications, including 1) Cancer cell discriminating pH probes; 2) Lysosome targetable pH probes; 3) Mitochondria targetable pH probes; 4) Golgi body targetable pH probes; 5) Endoplasmic reticulum targetable pH probes; 6) pH probes used in nonspecific cell imaging; and 7) pH probes without cell imaging. All these different categories exhibit diverse applications of pH probes in biological and environmental fields.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Colorimetric and fluorometric
• pH chemosensors
• biological and environmental applications

Acknowledgements

DB and AM are grateful to the CSIR, New Delhi, India [File No.: 08/003(0143)/2020-EMR-I and 08/ 003(0139)/2019-EMR-I for DB and AM, respectively] for providing a fellowship.

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest for this manuscript.