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Nano Research 2020, 13(4): 1035-1043 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-2740-x
Research Article | Issue | Published: 02 April 2020

Ultrastable and colorful afterglow from organic luminophores in amorphous nanocomposites: Advanced anti-counterfeiting and in vivo imaging application

Show Author's Information Qiuqin Huang1,  Heqi Gao2,  Shuming Yang1,  Dan Ding2( ),  Zhenghuan Lin1( ),  Qidan Ling3
Fujian Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials, College of Chemistry and Materials Science, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou 350007, China
State Key Laboratory of Medicinal Chemical Biology, Key Laboratory of Bioactive Materials, Ministry of Education, and College of Life Sciences, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China
Fujian provincial Key Laboratory of Advanced Materials Oriented Chemical Engineering, Fuzhou 350007, China
Keywords:
sol-gel, nanocomposite, bioimaging, phosphorescence, afterglow
Topics:
GelsIrradiationPhosphorescenceSilicaSiliconSols
Cite this article:
Huang Q, Gao H, Yang S, et al. Ultrastable and colorful afterglow from organic luminophores in amorphous nanocomposites: Advanced anti-counterfeiting and in vivo imaging application. Nano Research, 2020, 13(4): 1035-1043. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-2740-x
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Abstract Full text Electronic supplementary material About this article

Special attention has been paid to the organic afterglow materials (OAM) for their fascinating properties. However, poor stability at air and complicated structure design hinder the development of OAM. Herein, sol-gel, a facile and simple technique, is employed to synthesize a series of organic/inorganic hybrid nanocomposites (N1/SiO2, N2/SiO2, and N3/SiO2) by covalently linking three common aryl imides with crosslinked silica skeleton. These nanomaterials show excitation wavelength-dependent and colorful (yellow, red and green) afterglow of organic imides with long lifetime up to 1.1 s at air. Interestingly, the ultralong phosphorescence is ultrastable under various conditions: water, high temperature, UV irradiation and in vivo, due to the protection of inorganic silica. In particularly, heating to 500 oC does not quench the afterglow of organic luminophore in nanocomposites, but forms new ultralong phosphorescence originated from space-conjugation of silica and carbonyl. The afterglow nanomaterials display huge advantages in the applications of advanced anti-counterfeiting and bioimaging.


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Electronic supplementary material
About this article

Ultrastable and colorful afterglow from organic luminophores in amorphous nanocomposites: Advanced anti-counterfeiting and in vivo imaging application

Show Author's information Qiuqin Huang1, Heqi Gao2, Shuming Yang1, Dan Ding2( ), Zhenghuan Lin1( ), Qidan Ling3
Fujian Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials, College of Chemistry and Materials Science, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou 350007, China
State Key Laboratory of Medicinal Chemical Biology, Key Laboratory of Bioactive Materials, Ministry of Education, and College of Life Sciences, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China
Fujian provincial Key Laboratory of Advanced Materials Oriented Chemical Engineering, Fuzhou 350007, China

Abstract

Special attention has been paid to the organic afterglow materials (OAM) for their fascinating properties. However, poor stability at air and complicated structure design hinder the development of OAM. Herein, sol-gel, a facile and simple technique, is employed to synthesize a series of organic/inorganic hybrid nanocomposites (N1/SiO2, N2/SiO2, and N3/SiO2) by covalently linking three common aryl imides with crosslinked silica skeleton. These nanomaterials show excitation wavelength-dependent and colorful (yellow, red and green) afterglow of organic imides with long lifetime up to 1.1 s at air. Interestingly, the ultralong phosphorescence is ultrastable under various conditions: water, high temperature, UV irradiation and in vivo, due to the protection of inorganic silica. In particularly, heating to 500 oC does not quench the afterglow of organic luminophore in nanocomposites, but forms new ultralong phosphorescence originated from space-conjugation of silica and carbonyl. The afterglow nanomaterials display huge advantages in the applications of advanced anti-counterfeiting and bioimaging.

Keywords: sol-gel, nanocomposite, bioimaging, phosphorescence, afterglow

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Publication history
Copyright
Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 27 December 2019
Revised: 02 March 2020
Accepted: 03 March 2020
Published: 02 April 2020
Issue date: April 2020

Copyright

© Tsinghua University Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 21374017, 21574021 and 51873092), and the Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province (No. 2017J01684).

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