Facile Synthesis of Ultrastable Fluorescent Copper Nanoclusters and Their Cellular Imaging Application
Wei Yan,
Jianqiao Zhang,
Muhammad Abbas,
Yulian Li,
Syed Zajif Hussain,
Shazia Mumtaz,
Zhengwei Song,
Irshad Hussain,
Bien Tan
Affiliations
Wei Yan
Ministry-of-Education Key Laboratory for the Green Preparation and Application of Functional Materials, Hubei Collaborative Innovation Center for Advanced Organic Chemical Materials, Hubei Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials, Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering, Hubei University, Wuhan 430062, China
Jianqiao Zhang
Key Laboratory of Material Chemistry for Energy Conversion and Storage, Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Muhammad Abbas
Department of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, SBA School of Science & Engineering, Lahore University of Management Sciences(LUMS), Lahore 54792, Pakistan
Yulian Li
Key Laboratory of Material Chemistry for Energy Conversion and Storage, Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Syed Zajif Hussain
Department of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, SBA School of Science & Engineering, Lahore University of Management Sciences(LUMS), Lahore 54792, Pakistan
Shazia Mumtaz
Department of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, SBA School of Science & Engineering, Lahore University of Management Sciences(LUMS), Lahore 54792, Pakistan
Zhengwei Song
Ministry-of-Education Key Laboratory for the Green Preparation and Application of Functional Materials, Hubei Collaborative Innovation Center for Advanced Organic Chemical Materials, Hubei Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials, Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering, Hubei University, Wuhan 430062, China
Irshad Hussain
Department of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, SBA School of Science & Engineering, Lahore University of Management Sciences(LUMS), Lahore 54792, Pakistan
Bien Tan
Key Laboratory of Material Chemistry for Energy Conversion and Storage, Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Copper nanoclusters (Cu NCs) are generally formed by several to dozens of atoms. Because of wide range of raw materials and cheap prices, Cu NCs have attracted scientists’ special attention. However, Cu NCs tend to undergo oxidation easily. Thus, there is a dire need to develop a synthetic protocol for preparing fluorescent Cu NCs with high QY and better stability. Herein, we report a one-step method for preparing stable blue-green fluorescent copper nanoclusters using glutathione (GSH) as both a reducing agent and a stabilizing agent. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and electrospray ionization mass spectrometer (ESI-MS) were used to characterize the resulting Cu NCs. The as-prepared Cu NCs@GSH possess an ultrasmall size (2.3 ± 0.4 nm), blue-green fluorescence with decent quantum yield (6.2%) and good stability. MTT results clearly suggest that the Cu NCs@GSH are biocompatible. After incubated with EB-labeled HEK293T cells, the Cu NCs mainly accumulated in nuclei of the cells, suggesting that the as-prepared Cu NCs could potentially be used as the fluorescent probe for applications in cellular imaging.
