Cyanine Dyes: Design, Synthesis, and Photophysicochemical and Biological Evaluation

Dear Colleagues,

Cyanine dyes are a very well-known subclass of polymethine dyes. The first member of this class was accidently obtained by Greville Williams in 1856. Due to the beautiful blue color of this dye in solution, the name cyano (kyano means blue in Greek) was used to designate this class of dyes. Subsequently, and especially after the middle of the last century, an almost infinite number of cyanine dyes absorbing from ultraviolet to infrared light and covering all colors of the visible spectra were prepared by introducing a series of structural variations into their fundamental structure.

Regardless of their countless colors in solution, the main application of cyanine dyes was not in the textile industry, which remains insignificant, but in the field of color tripack photography, due to their incomparable capacity to impart blue, green, and red sensitivity to a silver halide emulsion. Near the end of the last century, with the advent of digital photography, this application became nothing more than a curiosity. Meanwhile, however, a large number of functional applications of this class of dyes were developed in several fields of science, technology, engineering, and medicine.

This Special Issue aims to collect the most recent advances regarding this admirable class of dyes, including their design, synthesis, and photophysicochemical and biological evaluation.

It will specially welcome manuscripts concerning fundamental and/or application studies of these molecules in laser technology, organic solar cells, as electrographic photoreceptors, in printing inks and laser printers, as acid–base or solvent polarity indicators in analytical chemistry, as anti-tumor agents—including in photodynamic therapy—as bactericidal and fungicidal agents, and other applications in pharmaceutics and medicine, namely, for nucleic acid and protein detection, in histological staining, for labelling other biomolecules.

Prof. Dr. Paulo Jorge da Silva Almeida
Dr. Samuel Martins Silvestre
Dr. Renato Emanuel Felix Boto
Guest Editors

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• Cyanine dyes
• Design
• Synthesis
• Photophysicochemical evaluation
• Biological evaluation