On the Design of Fluorescent Ratiometric Nanosensors

Abstract

Advances in nanoparticle technology have recently offered new tools to the bioanalytical field of research. In particular, new nanoparticle‐based sensors have appeared able to give quantitative information about different species (ions, metabolites, biomolecules) in biosamples through ratiometric measurements. This article describes the methodologies developed so far in the design of such nanosensors. In particular, the different approaches to immobilize fluorescent chemosensor dyes to nanoparticles are presented. Concept designs of ratiometric nanosensors in terms of composition and architecture are also described and illustrated with examples taken from the literature.

A Ratiometric Sensor Using Single Chirality Near‐Infrared Fluorescent Carbon Nanotubes: Application to In Vivo Monitoring

“…In analytical chemistry, such probes are often employed as ratiometric sensors in which one of two distinct fl uorophores report an analyte-independent reference signal to which the sensing signal is scaled. [ 9 ] To date, it has not been possible to generate a ratiometric sensor using carbon nanotubes because of diffi culty in separating the nanotubes as distinct chiral species with characteristic emission wavelengths. In this work, we capitalize on recent progress from our group and others in the separating and sorting of SWCNT [10][11][12][13][14][15] to generate the fi rst SWCNT ratiometric fl uorescent sensors.…”

Localized Intracellular pH Measurement Using a Ratiometric Photoinduced Electron‐Transfer‐Based Nanosensor

“…[7] Kopelman and co-workers designed PEBBLEs (probes encapsulated by biologically localized embedding), ratiometric fluorescence nanosensors, for the intracellular measurement of pH.…”

Carbon-Dot and Quantum-Dot-Coated Dual-Emission Core–Satellite Silica Nanoparticles for Ratiometric Intracellular Cu2+ Imaging

“…However, the probes based on signal emission intensity changes are likely to be influenced by some factors, such as instrumental efficiency, environmental conditions and the concentration of probe molecules. The ratiometric fluorescent probe signal discrepancy is easier to be 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 4 distinguished by naked eyes, paralleled with the fluorescence quenching probe signal. More interestingly, the ratiometric fluorescent probe offers a built-in environmental interference correction as mentioned above, which excludes the fluctuation of light excitation intensity [9][10][11][12][13][14] . In recent years, dual-emission fluorescent nanoparticles (NPs) have attracted substantial research interest 15-23 .…”