A dioxaborine-based ratiometric fluorescent probe derived from 2-hydroxy-3-pinanone for H₂O₂ detection and...

Hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) plays a crucial role in food processing and environmental remediation. Therefore, it is greatly significant to establish an accurate, rapid and sensitive method for H₂O₂ detection. Based on the natural product skeleton of 2-hydroxy-3-pinanone, a novel ratiometric fluorescent probe DPBO was rationally designed and synthesized via the intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) mechanism, which exhibited excellent detection performance for H₂O₂, including good selectivity, strong anti-interference ability and no response to other peroxides. In addition, the probe DPBO also exhibited an excellent linear fluorescence response to H₂O₂ concentration from 1 to 100 μM, and the detection limit was calculated as low as 0.09 μM. This probe was successfully employed for the quantitative detection of H₂O₂ in diverse real-world food and beverage samples including red wine, beer, tap water, tea, milk and noodle with high accuracy and high recovery rates ranging from 90.30% to 99.67%. Furthermore, the practical utility of probe DPBO was extended to biological systems, and the visualization detection of H₂O₂ in living HeLa cells and zebrafish was realized. These results demonstrated that probe DPBO possessed favorable biocompatibility and excellent potential for practical applications in both food safety and bioimaging contexts.