A BODIPY-Based Donor/Donor-Acceptor System: Towards Highly Efficient Long-Wavelength-Excitable Near-IR Polymer Dots with Narrow and Strong Absorption Features.

ABSTRACT: Bright long-wavelength-excitable semiconducting polymer dots (LWE-Pdots) are highly desirable for in?vivo imaging and multiplexed in?vitro bioassays. LWE-Pdots have been obtained by incorporating a near-infrared (NIR) emitter into the backbone of a polymer host to develop a binary donor-acceptor (D-A) system. However, they usually suffer from severe concentration quenching and a trade-off between fluorescence quantum yield (?f ) and absorption cross-section (?). Herein, we describe a ternary component (D1 /D2 -A) strategy to achieve ultrabright, green laser-excitable Pdots with narrow-band NIR emission by introducing a BODIPY-based assistant polymer donor as D1 . The D1 /D2 -A Pdots possess improved ?f and ? compared to corresponding binary D2 -A Pdots. Their ?f is as high as 40.2?%, one of the most efficient NIR Pdots reported. The D1 /D2 -A Pdots show ultrahigh single-particle brightness, 83-fold brighter than Qdot 705 when excited by a 532?nm laser. When injected into mice, higher contrast in?vivo tumor imaging was achieved using the ternary Pdots versus the binary D-A Pdots.

SUBMITTER: Chen L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6513679 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature