Issue 25, 2013
From the journal:

Journal of Materials Chemistry B

Non-blinking, highly luminescent, pH- and heavy-metal-ion-stable organic nanodots for bio-imaging†

Fei-Fei An,‡a   Jun Ye,‡a   Jin-Feng Zhang,a   Yin-Long Yang,c   Cai-Jun Zheng,a   Xiu-Juan Zhang,*c   Zhuang Liu,c   Chun-Sing Leeb  and  Xiao-Hong Zhang*a  

* Corresponding authors

a Nano-Organic Photoelectronic Laboratory and Key Laboratory of Photochemical Conversion and Optoelectronic Materials, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, P.R. China
E-mail: xhzhang@mail.ipc.ac.cn

b Center of Super-Diamond and Advanced Films (COSDAF), Department of Physics and Materials Sciences, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, P.R. China

c Functional Nano & Soft Materials Laboratory (FUNSOM) and Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Carbon-Based Functional Materials & Devices, Soochow University, Suzhou, Jiangsu 215123, P.R. China
E-mail: xjzhang@suda.edu.cn

Abstract

Heavy-metal-free, organic-small-molecule-based fluorescent nanodots (Sdots, 31–60 nm in diameter) based on 2,7-di(4-(diphenylamino)phenyl-2,1,3-benzothiadiazol-7-yl)-9,9′-spirobifluorene (Spiro-BTA) were prepared through a simple solution process. The Sdots show not only non-blinking and high-brightness fluorescence but also stability in various pH conditions and heavy metal ion solutions. More importantly, Spiro-BTA Sdots demonstrate obviously much higher brightness with very high signal-to-background ratio in Hela cell, compared with common CdSe/ZnS QDs. In addition, they exhibit large Stokes shifts, broad absorption spectra, and low toxicity to living cells which enable their applications as good fluorescence probes for bio-imaging. Further application of Sdots for folate receptor-mediated live-cell endocytosis was demonstrated by non-convalent modification with folic acid linked multidentate ligands.

Graphical abstract: Non-blinking, highly luminescent, pH- and heavy-metal-ion-stable organic nanodots for bio-imaging

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Article information

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1039/C3TB20271B
Article type
Paper
Submitted
27 Feb 2013
Accepted
26 Apr 2013
First published
26 Apr 2013

J. Mater. Chem. B, 2013,1, 3144-3151

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Non-blinking, highly luminescent, pH- and heavy-metal-ion-stable organic nanodots for bio-imaging

F. An, J. Ye, J. Zhang, Y. Yang, C. Zheng, X. Zhang, Z. Liu, C. Lee and X. Zhang, J. Mater. Chem. B, 2013, 1, 3144 DOI: 10.1039/C3TB20271B

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