Blue luminescent pyridine-tethered quinazoline framework: Highly selective and sensitive picric acid chemosensor

• One-pot, three-component domino synthesis of pyridine-tethered quinazoline hybrids. • Structure of pyridine-tethered quinazolines characterized by IR, NMR , and HRMS . • These pyridine-tethered quinazolines exhibited blue fluorescence under UV. • They were selective and sensitive probes for sensing picric acid with LOD in nM. • Real sample analysis revealed a good average recovery value. The microwave-assisted one-pot three-component reaction of 2-phenyl-7,8-dihydroquinazolin-5(6 H )-one, 2-arylidenemalononitrile and ammonium acetate under solvent-free conditions occurred through a five-step multiple bond-forming transformation to afford 2-amino-8-phenyl-4-aryl-5,6-dihydropyrido[2,3- f ]quinazoline-3-carbonitriles in excellent yields. All the quinazoline-3-carbonitriles exhibited bright blue fluorescence under a UV lamp and were found to be efficient chemosensors of picric acid with detection limits in the nano-molar range.