A Family of BODIPY-like Highly Fluorescent and Unsymmetrical Bis(BF2) Pyrrolyl-Acylhydrazone Chromophores: BOAPY.

A new family of pyrrolyl-acylhydrazones anchored with two BF2 units, named BOAPY, have been developed as BODIPY-like and unsymmetrical bis(BF2) chromophores via a simple one-pot reaction. The easily accessible scaffold enjoys excellent diversity due to the structural versatilities of 2-formylpyrroles and acylhydrazines. BOAPYs exhibit good molar absorption coefficients, large Stokes shifts, and excellent chemical stability. More importantly, most of them display excellent fluorescence quantum yields both in solution and the solid state (up to 0.88 and 0.64, respectively).