2007 Volume 18 Issue 3 Pages 124-133
As sugars are essential biological molecules for human existence, simple and prompt recognition of sugars in aqueous solution is a very important subject. Therefore, various kinds of sugar sensors have been developed. The fluorescent boronic acids are focused as chemical sensors among them due to their stability. The boronic acids are important functional groups for design of chemical sensors for sugar recognition, because they are known to form esters with diols. In this paper, the progress of fluorescent phenyboronic acid sensors is reviewed based on two different mechanisms for fluorescence change. One is internal charge transfer (ICT) system, and the other is photoinduced electron transfer (PET) system. The examples of each sensor were shown and their mechanisms upon sugar recognition were explained. Most of monoboronic acids exhibit the fructose selectivity, however, glucose selectivity is necessary for the management of diabetes. Therefore, glucose sensors based on diboronic acids and supramolecular sensors have been developed. These examples were also summarized.
