Structural modification of BODIPY: Improve its applicability

BODIPY has been considered a potential scaffold because of their neutral total charge, sharp absorption, and emission with high fluorescence quantum yield. However, the drawback of emission wavelength at less than 600 nm and hydrophobicity limit its application. One of the extremely interesting properties of BODIPY is that small modifications to their structures could be able to tune their properties, mainly including the absorption/emission wavelength and the hydrophilicity. This review focuses on the modification at different positions of BODIPY to improve the water-solubility and emission wavelength that describe their spectral, photophysical properties and applicability, which is helpful for the researchers to rationally design BODIPY dyes to adapt a wide range of applications.