Carbon
dots (CDs) have been widely studied for their excellent properties.
However, most of the prepared CDs only show strong emission in the
blue to green region, which greatly limits the application of CDs
in the biomedical field. In this report, a new design strategy of
long-wavelength CDs was reported. The orange phenyl-CDs with good
optical properties and biocompatibility were successfully prepared
by changing the substituted group of the o-phenylenediamine
and the main emission band of phenyl-CDs was in the far-red region.
With the increase of polarity, the wavelength of phenyl-CDs red-shifts
and the fluorescence intensity decreases, demonstrating their sensitive
polarity response function. In addition, phenyl-CDs can achieve ultrafast
target imaging of lysosome within 40 s through clathrin-mediated endocytosis.
Finally, phenyl-CDs were successfully applied for monitoring lysosomal
polarity induced by drugs, which is helpful in getting a better understanding
of the physiological and pathological processes of lysosomes. This
report provides an important theoretical basis for the rational design
and precise synthesis of long-wavelength fluorescent CDs.
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