Synthesis of a New Amino-Furopyridine-Based Compound as a Novel Fluorescent pH Sensor in Aqueous Solution

Development of new fluorescent molecules, especially pH-sensitive fluorescent dyes, is always in high demand due to their wide applications in various fields and the limited number of common chromophores. In this work, a family of 3-amino-N-phenylfuro[2,3-b]pyridine-2-carboxamides (AFP) was synthesized as novel fluorescent compounds. Besides fluorescence in an organic solvent, AFP 1 and AFP 2 exhibit good fluorescence properties in both acidic and basic aqueous solution, which could be explained by protonation or different conformations formed in solution. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations on the highest occupied molecular orbital-lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (HOMO-LUMO) of various conformations were performed for further support.