Facile fabrication of luminescent organic dots by thermolysis of citric acid in urea melt, and their use for cell staining and polyelectrolyte microcapsule labelling

  • Beilstein J Nanotechnol. 2016 Dec 2;7:1905-1917. doi: 10.3762/bjnano.7.182.
Nadezhda M Zholobak  1 ,  Anton L Popov  2 ,  Alexander B Shcherbakov  1 ,  Nelly R Popova  2 ,  Mykhailo M Guzyk  3 ,  Valeriy P Antonovich  4 ,  Alla V Yegorova  4 ,  Yuliya V Scrypynets  4 ,  Inna I Leonenko  4 ,  Alexander Ye Baranchikov  5 ,  Vladimir K Ivanov  6
Affiliations
  • 1. Zabolotny Institute of Microbiology and Virology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv 03680, Ukraine.
  • 2. Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Biophysics, Pushchino 142290, Russia.
  • 3. Palladin Institute of Biochemistry NAS of Ukraine, Kyiv 01601, Ukraine.
  • 4. Bogatsky Physico-Chemical Institute, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Odessa 65080, Ukraine.
  • 5. Kurnakov Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow 119991, Russia.
  • 6. Kurnakov Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow 119991, Russia; National Research Tomsk State University, Tomsk 634050, Russia.
PMID: 28144539 DOI: 10.3762/bjnano.7.182
Abstract

Luminescent organic dots (O-dots) were synthesized via a one-pot, solvent-free thermolysis of citric acid in urea melt. The influence of the ratio of the precursors and the duration of the process on the properties of the O-dots was established and a mechanism of their formation was hypothesized. The multicolour luminescence tunability and toxicity of synthesized O-dots were extensively studied. The possible applications of O-dots for alive/fixed cell staining and labelling of layer-by-layer polyelectrolyte microcapsules were evaluated.

Keywords
cell culture; citric acid; layer-by-layer (LbL)-microcapsules; luminescence; organic dots (O-dots); staining; toxicity.
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