Controllable acidophilic dual-emission fluorescent carbonized polymer dots for selective imaging of bacteria

Abstract

Red/blue dual-emission carbonized polymer dots (CPDs) were synthesized. Due to their sensitive acidophilic properties, selective imaging of bacteria was achievable without further modification of CPDs.

Self-Enhanced Carbonized Polymer Dots for Selective Visualization of Lysosomes and Real-Time Apoptosis Monitoring

“…Although CPDs have been widely applied in bioimaging field (Du et al, 2019;Zhao et al, 2019;Zheng et al, 2015), only several papers realized the selective visualization of specific organelles in cells, including nucleolus (Bao et al, 2018;Hua et al, 2018Hua et al, , 2019Khan et al, 2018), mitochondrion (Gao et al, 2017;Hua et al, 2017), Golgi apparatus (Li et al, 2017;Yuan et al, 2017), andlysosomes (E et al, 2018;Wu et al, 2017;Zhang et al, 2018b). Lysosomes are membrane-bound cytoplasmic organelles, playing critical roles in intracellular macromolecules receiving and degradation from the secretory, endocytic, autophagic, and phagocytic pathways (Saftig and Klumperman, 2009).…”

“…These CPDs target lysosomes actively and only exist in lysosomes with the need of surface chemistry or afterward surface modification (E et al, 2018;Wu et al, 2017;Zhang et al, 2018b). Although numerous papers described CPDs pH sensors (E et al, 2018;Hu et al, 2014;Lu et al, 2014;Wang et al, 2019;Wu et al, 2014;Zhang et al, 2018b;Zhao et al, 2019;Zhu et al, 2013), most pH-dependent CPDs only present brighter PL emission in neutral aqueous solutions (E et al, 2018;Hu et al, 2014;Wu et al, 2014;Zhang et al, 2018b;Zhu et al, 2013) and are not suitable for acidic environment. Only a few of them possess stronger emission in acid solutions (Lu et al, 2014;Wang et al, 2019;Zhao et al, 2019).…”

“…Although numerous papers described CPDs pH sensors (E et al, 2018;Hu et al, 2014;Lu et al, 2014;Wang et al, 2019;Wu et al, 2014;Zhang et al, 2018b;Zhao et al, 2019;Zhu et al, 2013), most pH-dependent CPDs only present brighter PL emission in neutral aqueous solutions (E et al, 2018;Hu et al, 2014;Wu et al, 2014;Zhang et al, 2018b;Zhu et al, 2013) and are not suitable for acidic environment. Only a few of them possess stronger emission in acid solutions (Lu et al, 2014;Wang et al, 2019;Zhao et al, 2019). The pH sensitivity of CPDs is regarded to result from the protonation and deprotonation of the amino and carboxyl groups on the surface.…”

“…Compared with traditional semiconductor quantum dots (Chen et al, 2015), fluorescent carbon dots (CDs) have drawn great attentions (Baker and Baker, 2010;Yang et al, 2013;Zhang et al, 2012) due to their good biocompatibility, chemical stability, easy chemical modification, and low toxicity (Cao et al, 2013;, holding promising for use in various fields including the bioimaging (Du et al, 2019;Zhao et al, 2019;Zheng et al, 2015), optical sensing (Dong et al, 2015;Zhang et al, 2014;Zhao et al, 2015), medical diagnosis (Kong et al, 2012), catalysis (Jin et al, 2015;Li et al, 2010), and photovoltaic devices (Gupta et al, 2011). Notably, CDs can be obtained from many materials, such as polymer (Liu et al, 2012), amino acid (Jiang et al, 2012;Lu et al, 2014), protein (Liu et al, 2013), sugar (Yang et al, 2011), and some small molecules such as citric acid (Liu et al, 2013;Qu et al, 2012Qu et al, , 2014bZhai et al, 2012;Zhu et al, 2013), which are highly abundant on the earth.…”

High production-yield solid-state carbon dots with tunable photoluminescence for white/multi-color light-emitting diodes

“…CDs are a promising new carbon-based material owing to their outstanding properties, including biocompatibility, chemical stability, fabrication from a wide range of precursors, low toxicity, and low cost [13][14][15]. Potential uses of CDs include catalysis [16,17], bioimaging [18][19][20], optoelectronics [21,22], and energy conversion [23][24][25][26]. However, the development of CDs still faces several important challenges [27].…”