Article Cite This: ACS Appl. Nano Mater. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
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Facile Synthesis of Water-Dispersed Photoluminescent Gold(I)Alkanethiolate Nanoparticles via Aggregation-Induced Emission and Their Application in Cell Imaging Lijun Xu,†,‡,# Yi Cao,‡,# Shanni Hong,‡ Ye Kuang,‡ Min Liu,‡ Aihua Liu,† Yuanyuan Zhang,*,§ and Renjun Pei*,‡
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Institute for Biosensing, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Qingdao University, 308 Ningxia Road, Qingdao 266071, China ‡ CAS Key Laboratory of Nano-Bio Interface, Division of Nanobiomedicine, Suzhou Institute of Nano-Tech and Nano-Bionics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Suzhou 215123, China § School of Life Science, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, 230032, China S Supporting Information *
ABSTRACT: Gold(I)-alkanethiolates could assemble themselves into highly ordered nanostructures, however, they could not be dissolved or dispersed in various common solvents. Here, a novel and facile method of synthesizing water-dispersed luminescent Au(I)-alkanethiolate nanoparticles via aggregation-induced emission is reported for the first time. With the aid of two surfactants (didodecyldimethylammonium bromide (DDAB) and tween 80), the luminescent gold nanoparticles possess excellent water dispersion stability. Besides, they exhibit a large Stokes shift (24278 cm−1), red emission, high quantum yield (50.7%) and extraordinary stability toward pH, salts, redox agents (NaBH4, Na2S, cysteine and H2O2) and light irradiation. The luminescent gold nanoparticles are also used for cell imaging successfully. KEYWORDS: luminescence, fluorescence, gold, nanoparticle, nanocluster, aggregation-induced emission
1. INTRODUCTION Gold-based luminescent nanomaterials (AuLNs) have recently gained growing interest for their potential applications in optoelectronic devices, sensing and imaging, because of their advantages than pure organic dyes, such as easy synthesis, the large Stokes shift, and resistance to photobleaching.1−5 Among the AuLNs, gold nanoclusters and gold(I) complexes cover the most of the present research. Gold nanoclusters with Au(0) cores and Au(I) shells typically contain
