Highly Emitting Perovskite Nanocrystals with 2-Year Stability in Water through an Automated Polymer Encapsulation for Bioimaging

Summary, in English

Lead-based halide perovskite nanocrystals are highly luminescent materials, but their sensitivity to humid environments and their biotoxicity are still important challenges to solve. Here, we develop a stepwise approach to encapsulate representative CsPbBr₃nanocrystals into water-soluble polymer capsules. We show that our protocol can be extended to nanocrystals coated with different ligands, enabling an outstanding high photoluminescence quantum yield of ∼60% that is preserved over two years in capsules dispersed in water. We demonstrate that this on-bench strategy can be implemented on an automated platform with slight modifications, granting access to a faster and more reproducible fabrication process. Also, we reveal that the capsules can be exploited as photoluminescent probes for cell imaging at a dose as low as 0.3 μg_Pb/mL that is well below the toxicity threshold for Pb and Cs ions. Our approach contributes to expanding significantly the fields of applications of these luminescent materials including biology and biomedicine.

• Author: Sahitya Kumar Avugadda; Andrea Castelli; Balaji Dhanabalan; Tamara Fernandez; Niccolo Silvestri; Cynthia Collantes; Dmitry Baranov; Muhammad Imran; Liberato Manna; Teresa Pellegrino; Milena P. Arciniegas
• Publishing year: 2022-09-27
• Language: English
• Pages: 13657-13666
• Publication/Series: ACS Nano
• Volume: 16
• Issue: 9
• Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.2c01556
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: The American Chemical Society (ACS)
• Topic: Materials Chemistry; Nano-technology; Inorganic Chemistry
• Keywords: automated fabrication; bioimaging; perovskite nanocrystals; polymer; water stability
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 1936-0851