Fluorescent chemosensors containing polyamine receptors

Chemosensors have attracted interest in many different scientific fields, such as environmental chemistry, medicine, and the processing and storage of information. These molecular-scale devices have the advantage of working on the same spatial scale as the chemical structures that are responsible for macroscopic behaviour observed in the environment or those associated with health problems. Moreover, they allow the construction of molecular-scale devices for information storage. In this review, we describe a family of chemosensors based on a polyamine receptor and a fluorescent signalling unit. Polyamine receptors are water-soluble ambidentate receptors; they are able to coordinate either metal ions, when sufficient deprotonated amino groups are available, or anionic species, when there are sufficient protonated amino groups. On the other hand, the use of fluorescent signalling units confers the advantage of an immediate visual response/signal.