The research on lipid droplets (LDs) has attracted great attention in the field of biomedical science in recent years. LD malfunction is found to be associated with the development of acute kidney injury (AKI). To monitor this biological process and explain related pathological behavior, the development of excellent LD fluorescent probes with a polarity-sensitive character would provide a desirable strategy. Herein, we designed a new polaritysusceptible fluorescent probe named LD-B with LD targetability, which exhibits very weak fluorescence in highly polar solvents based on the twisted intramolecular charge transfer effect but enhanced fluorescence in low polar environments, enabling us to visualize polarity alteration. The probe LD-B also possesses the merits of intense near-infrared (NIR) emission, good photostability, large Stokes shift, low toxicity, faster metabolic rate, and wash-free ability; thereby, it would contribute to efficient LD fluorescence visualization application. Using LD-B via confocal laser scanning fluorescence imaging and a small-animal imaging system in vivo, we first manifested a prominent rise of LD polarity in contrast-induced AKI (CI-AKI), not only at the cellular level but also in animals in vivo. Furthermore, the in vivo studies suggest that LD-B could accumulate in the kidney. In addition, the normal cell lines (including kidney cells) exhibiting a greater polarity of LDs than the cancer cells have been demonstrated systemically. Altogether, our work presents an effective approach for the medical diagnosis of LDs related to CI-AKI and identification of potential therapeutic markers.
With the development of organic solar cells (OSCs), the high-performance and stable batch variance are becoming a new challenge for designing polymer donors. To obtain high photovoltaic performance, adopting polymers with high molecular weight as donors is an ordinary strategy. However, the high molecular weight need to subtly control the reaction time and state, inevitably caused batch-to-batch variations. Herein, a strategy of steric effect is applied to benzodifuran (BDF)-based polymer by introducing different positions of Cl atom, producing two polymers PBDFCl-1 and PBDFCl-2. The more twisted side chains conformation not only achieve the control of moderate molecular weight for PBDFCl-2, but also easily form molecular stacking through adopting BDF unit and maintain sufficient polymeric crystallinity. Due to the optimized stacking mode and good blend miscibility, PBDFCl-2-based device exhibitsa more elegant power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 17.00% compared to PBDFCl-1-based device. This is the highest efficiency record for BDF-based binary OSCs. Meanwhile, the PCE device variation of the different molecular weights for PBDFCl-2 is little, indicating the reduction of the batch variation. Therefore, smartly using steric effect of Cl atom in strong crystalline BDF unit can form efficient molecular stacking regulations and realize the coordination of high-performance and stable batch variance.
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