β-Cyclodextrin derived full-spectrum fluorescent carbon dots: The formation process investigation and biological applications

作者：Zhu, Peide; Li, Wenjing; Zhang, Yuqi; Sun, Qiang; Lin, Yi; Qiu, Ailin; Chen, Xinyi; Zhou, Yujin; Wu, Guangfu; Li, Yifan; Yu, Zhiqiang; Xu, Quan^*; Luo, Dixian^*; Cai, Lulu^*

来源：CHINESE CHEMICAL LETTERS, 2023, 34(10): 108239.

DOI：10.1016/j.cclet.2023.108239

• Carbon dots
• Multi-emission
• Fluorescence mechanism
• Mitochondrial targeting
• Color tenability
• Fluorescence imaging

Carbon dots (CDs), a new building unit, have been revolutionizing the fields of biomedicine, bioimaging, and optoelectronics with their excellent physical, chemical, and biological properties. However, the difficulty of preparing excitation-dependent full-spectrum fluorescent CDs has seriously hindered their further research in fluorescence emission mechanisms and biomedicine. Here, we report full-spectrum fluorescent CDs that exhibit controlled emission changes from purple (380 nm) to red (613 nm) at room temperature by changing the excitation wavelength, and the excitation dependence was closely related to the regulation of sp 2 and sp 3 hybrid carbon structures by & beta;-cyclodextrin-related groups. In addition, by regulating the content of & beta;-cyclodextrin, the optimal quantum yields of full-spectrum fluorescent CDs were 8.97%, 8.35%, 7.90%, 9.69% and 17.4% at the excitation wavelengths of 340, 350, 390, 410 and 540 nm, respectively. Due to their excellent biocompatibility and color tunability, full-spectrum fluorescent CDs emitted bright and steady purple, blue, green, yellow, and red fluorescence in MCF-7 cells. Moreover, we optimized the imaging conditions of CDs and mitochondrial-specific dyes; and realized the mitochondrialtargeted co-localization imaging of purple, blue and green fluorescence. After that, we also explored the effect of full-spectrum fluorescent CDs in vivo fluorescence imaging through the intratumorally, subcutaneously, and caudal vein, and found that full-spectrum fluorescent CDs had good fluorescence imaging ability in vivo .& COPY; 2023 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Chinese Chemical Society and Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.

• 单位
  电子科技大学; 华中科技大学; 南方医科大学