Author Affiliations
Abstract
Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Devices and Systems of Ministry of Education and Guangdong Province, College of Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, P. R. China
Inorganic quantum dots (QDs) have excellent optical properties, such as high fluorescence intensity, excellent photostability and tunable emission wavelength, etc., facilitating them to be used as labels and probes for bioimaging. In this study, CdSe@ZnS QDs are used as probes for Fluorescence lifetime imaging microscope (FLIM) and stimulated emission depletion (STED) nanoscopy imaging. The emission peak of CdSe@ZnS QDs centered at 526 nm with a narrow width of 19 nm and the photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) was 64%. The QDs presented excellent anti-photobleaching property which can be irradiated for 400 min by STED laser with 39.8mW. The lateral resolution of 42.0 nm is demonstrated for single QDs under STED laser (27.5mW) irradiation. Furthermore, the CdSe@ZnS QDs were for the first time used to successfully label the lysosomes of living HeLa cells and 81.5nm lateral resolution is obtained indicating the available super-resolution applications in living cells for inorganic QD probes. Meanwhile, Eca-109 cells labeled with the CdSe@ZnS QDs was observed with FLIM, and their fluorescence lifetime was around 3.1 ns, consistent with the in vitro value, suggesting that the QDs could act as a satisfactory probe in further FLIM-STED experiments.
CdSe@ZnS QDs FLIM STED living cells Journal of Innovative Optical Health Sciences
2019, 12(5): 1940003