Alkyl‐Doping Enables Significant Suppression of Conformational Relaxation and Intermolecular Nonradiative Decay for Improved Near‐Infrared Fluorescence Imaging
Abstract
Despite various efforts to optimize the near‐infrared (NIR) performance of perylene diimide (PDI) derivatives for bio‐imaging, convenient and efficient strategies to amplify the fluorescence of PDI derivatives in biological environment and the intrinsic mechanism studies are still lacking. Herein, we propose an alkyl‐doping strategy to amplify the fluorescence of PDI derivative‐based nanoparticles for improved NIR fluorescence imaging. The developed PDI derivative, OPE‐PDI, shows much brighter in n‐Hexane (HE) compared with that in other organic media, and the excited state dynamics investigation experimentally elucidates the solvent effect‐induced suppression of intermolecular energy transfer and intramolecular nonradiative decay as the underlying mechanism for the fluorescence improvement. Theoretical calculations reveal the lowest reorganization energies of OPE‐PDI in HE among various solvents, indicating the effectively suppressed conformational relaxation to support the strongest radiative decay. Inspired by this, an alkyl atmosphere mimicking HE is constructed by incorporating the octadecane into OPE‐PDI‐based nanoparticles, permitting up to 3‐fold fluorescence improvement compared with the counterpart nanoparticles. Owing to the merits of high brightness, anti‐photobleaching, and low biotoxicity for the optimal nanoparticles, they have been employed for probing and long‐term monitoring of tumor. This work highlights a facile strategy for the fluorescence enhancement of PDI derivative‐based nanoparticles.
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The femtosecond component suggests a deactivation preference over all other decay pathways within 4F NP1s, highlighting an intense intermolecular nonradiative decay that reduces emission.
“Notably, this femtosecond component suggests a deactivation preference over all other decay pathways within 4F NP1s, highlighting an intense interNR decay that reduces emission39,40.”
From Alleviating NIR-II emission quenching in ring-fused fluorophore via manipulating dimer populations for superior fluorescence imaging (2025) · cites this paper as [40]
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Self-citation
- Authors
- Liang, Y., Pan, Y., Chen, L., Li, P., Xu, M., Zhou, H., Lu, X., Hu, W., Yin, C., & Fan, Q.
- Affiliations
- Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications (CN)
- Northwestern Polytechnical University (CN)
- Nanjing Tech University (CN)
- Corresponding author
- Hu, Wenbo
- Yin, Chao
- Fan, Quli
- Venue
- Angewandte Chemie International Edition
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2024-08-02
- Volume
- 63
- Issue
- 36
- Pages
- e202408861-e202408861
- ISSN
- 1433-7851 (ISSN-L)
- 1521-3773
- OpenAlex
- W4399868957
- Cited by
- 22
- References
- 35
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 18
- FWCI
- 2.14
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Angewandte Chemie International Edition (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (62005127)
- Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20200751)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Materials Science › Materials Chemistry › Luminescence and Fluorescent Materials
- Physical Sciences › Chemistry › Physical and Theoretical Chemistry › Photochemistry and Electron Transfer Studies
- Physical Sciences › Chemistry › Spectroscopy › Molecular Sensors and Ion Detection
- Keywords
- perylene diimide derivatives, near-infrared fluorescence imaging, conformational relaxation, intermolecular energy transfer, nonradiative decay, solvent effects, reorganization energy, octadecane, fluorescent nanoparticles, tumor imaging, biocompatibility
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