A research paper authored by Dr. Soichi Yokoyama (Research Associate, School of Environmental Science and Engineering) and his co-researchers was published in the English journal, Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Japan (2019, Vol. 92, No. 11) and chosen as a Selected Paper.

The title of the paper is "Anion-Capture-Induced Fluorescence Enhancement of Bis (cyanostyryl) pyrrole Based on Restricted Access to a Conical Intersection."

In order to visualize the many anions that play an important role in the body, Dr. Yokoyama's research group developed a molecular structure that interacts with anions to exhibit enhanced luminescence. One of the methods for finding a specific substance present in the living body, the use of a molecule with which expresses or enhances fluorescence* when it interacts with a specific substance makes it possible to visualize the location of the substance by means of light.

This paper (1) clarifies theoretically and experimentally the mechanism by which fluorescence intensity is greatly enhanced by the suppression of the movement of molecules that have captured anions (that is, suppressing thermal motion), using the developed original molecular skeleton; and (2) explains possible applications to visualization.

The application of this research result is a new concept for the detection of substances; it is expected to be one of the new molecular design pointers for the development of materials that can detect both anions and various other substances.

This paper is open access and can be viewed here.

Reference: S. Yokoyama, A. Ito, H. Asahara, N. Nishiwaki, Bull. Chem. Soc. Jpn. 2019, 92, 1807-1815.

*Fluorescence: When a molecule absorbs energy from its surroundings, the energy becomes unstable (excited state)--then when the molecule releases its excess energy, it either returns to a stable energy state (ground state) by thermal motion (non-radiative decay); or it returns to a ground state by emitting light (in the form of electromagnetic waves). That light is called "fluorescence."

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