Photoluminescent F-doped carbon dots prepared by ring-opening reaction for gene delivery and cell imaging

Abstract

Carbon dots (CDs) are photoluminescent nanoparticles with distinctive properties, having great potential in nano-biomaterial systems such as gene/drug delivery vectors and cell imaging agents.

Recent Advancements in Doped/Co-Doped Carbon Quantum Dots for Multi-Potential Applications

“…In addition, the weight ratio of 25kb-PEI based F-doped CQDs to DNA is nearly equal to 0.5, indicating an equivalent binding capacity to that of only F-doped CQDs. Similarly, the results from the investigation by Luo et al have revealed that the F-doped CQDs have possessed much higher transfection efficiency of pEGFP-N1 than PEI 600 contrasts in different cell lines including A549 cells, HepG2 cells, 7702 cells, and HeLa cells [67]. Moreover, as compared to non-fluorinated counterparts, the fluorinated CQDs have exhibited distinctly higher transfection efficiency, and up to 30 and times higher efficiency than PEI 25 kDa is achieved in the absence and presence of serum, respectively, indicating the advantage of F-doping.…”

“…F-CQDs have shown a nuclear/polymer nanostructure by constituting a carbonaceous nuclear core, and a fluorine-bearing cationic polymer film surface [66]. Moreover, in another study, Luo et al (2018) fabricated F-doped CQDs by combining ring-opening polymerization-dehydrative carbonization (RPDC) process and hydrothermal method (12 h at 180 • C), while utilizing PEI 600Da and 2,2,3,3,4,4-hexafluoro-1,5-pentanediol diglycidyl ether (as F source) as starting materials [67]. The maximum excitation and emission wavelengths of these F-doped CQDs are found to be 348 and 460 nm, respectively, with QY of 5.6%.…”

Application of carbon dots in dye‐sensitized solar cells: A review

“…As mentioned above, doping is a significant way to control the properties of nanomaterials, different surface functionalization also has a notable influence on the sensitization effect of CDs in cells . It is well documented that heteroatom doping (i.e., N, S, F, Si, B 60 ) can enhance CDs optical properties and collection of the more solar spectrum.…”

“…Carbon dots (CDs) are a category of zero‐dimensional carbon‐based nanoparticles, endowed with excellent photo‐luminescence, water‐soluble, high biocompatibility, and low toxicity . Due to their fantastic properties, these nanoparticles have gained lots of interest for a wide range of applications including sensors, bio‐imaging, drug delivery, light‐emitting diodes, and photo‐catalytic . In a broad sense, CDs can be divided into graphene quantum dots (GQDs), carbon quantum dots (CQDs) and carbon nanodots (CNDs) according to the core crystallinity and presence or absence of quantum confinement effect …”

[12]aneN3-based multifunctional compounds as fluorescent probes and nucleic acids delivering agents

“…However, their clinical applications are limited due to high immunogenicity and limited loading capacity (Thomas et al, 2003;Luo et al, 2015). In contrast, non-viral vectors such as cationic lipids, cationic polymers, and organic functional molecules have received more and more attention due to their easy preparation, low immunogenicity, and good biodegradability (Posocco et al, 2013;Yi et al, 2014;Ramamoorth & Narvekar, 2015;Yang et al, 2015;Hu et al, 2016;Wang et al, 2016;Hardee et al, 2017;Wang et al, 2017;Luo et al, 2018;Tan et al, 2018;Li et al, 2019;Wang et al, 2019). Among these non-viral vectors, organic functional molecules such as organic fluorescent compounds not only show high transfection efficiency but also exhibit good tracking ability (You et al, 2014;Gao et al, 2015).…”