Enhanced Blue Afterglow through Molecular Fusion for Bio‐applications

Abstract

Afterglow materials have drawn considerable attention due to their attractive luminescent properties. However, their low‐efficiency luminescence in aqueous environment limits their applications in life sciences. Here, we developed a molecular fusion strategy to improve the afterglow efficiency of photochemical afterglow materials. By fusing a cache unit with an emitter, we obtained a blue afterglow system with a quantum yield up to 2.59 %. This is 162 times higher than that achieved with the traditional physical mixing system and more than an order of magnitude larger than that of the covalent coupling system. High‐efficiency afterglow nanoparticles were obtained and utilized for bio‐imaging with a high signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) of 131, and for the lateral flow immunoassay (LFIA) of β‐hCG with a low limit of detection (LOD) of 0.34 mIU mL−1. This paves a new way for the construction of high‐efficiency afterglow materials and expands the number of luminescence reporter candidates for disease diagnosis and bio‐imaging.

Room-Temperature Phosphorescence of Pure Axially Chiral Bicarbazoles

“…Room-temperature phosphorescence (RTP) from metal-free organic materials has received a great deal attention due to its immense applications in optoelectronics, imaging and diagnostic agents, and advanced anticounterfeiting . However, designing organic RTP materials is generally challenging, because without heavy-metal atoms, both the rate of intersystem crossing (ISC; S 1 → T n ) and the rate of radiative deactivation (T 1 → S 0 ) are typically slow [El-Sayed rule (Figure )], which cannot compete with the relative fast fluorescence and other nonradiative deactivations.…”

A biomineral-inspired approach of synthesizing colloidal persistent phosphors as a multicolor, intravital light source

“…2E). Furthermore, the luminescence quantum yield of SMSO colloidal solution was measured to be ~21.0% (Materials and Methods), which is higher than that of photochemical afterglow systems as previously reported (14,33).…”

“…The luminescence quantum yield measurement was conducted by following protocols established in previous reports ( 14 , 33 , 50 ). Specifically, the SMSO nanophosphor colloid was excited by a collimated 365-nm light beam coupled from an LED (M365LP1, Thorlabs, Newton, NJ).…”

“…In addition, these short-wavelength light sources must have good colloidal stability in physiological aqueous environments to facilitate their delivery in vivo, preferably via the circulatory system. Despite recent efforts in developing short-wavelength afterglow materials for biological applications ( 14 , 15 ), the decay lifetimes and brightness of these materials remain to be improved. Thus, there is still a scarcity of afterglow nanomaterials with long lifetimes, sufficiently short wavelengths (especially blue), and colloidal stability to enable in vivo use as an internal light source.…”

Time-domain stepwise encoding based on a stepped photon emission material

“…S2a, ESI †). 17 Carboxylic crosslinked polystyrene nanoparticles were employed as nanocarriers, where the carboxyl groups could provide hydrophilic groups and conjugation sites for promising bio-applications. The hydrophobic functional molecules (sensitizer, photochemical cache unit and emitter; Fig.…”