Photoinduced Luminescence Enhancement of Hydrophilic ‘Caged’ Carbons Dots

Candidate: Aviya Akari
Supervisor: Dr. Stefania Impellizzeri

ABSTRACT

Over the last decade, carbon dots (CDs) have quickly emerged as outstanding ‘green’ nanoprobes for fluorescence imaging and microscopy techniques. In this context, the identification of a mechanism to tune the CD’s optical properties (e.g., fluorescence) can translate into the development of photoactivatable probes with improved performance for super-resolution bioimaging. In relation to this, we devised a facile synthetic protocol to photoactivate the luminescence of two types of hydrophilic carbon dots (-COOH and -N doped carbon dots) by ‘caging’ the nanostructures with photocleavable 2-nitrobenzyl groups. We demonstrated that 2-nitrobenzyl groups efficiently quench the emission intensity of both resulting nanoconstructs. Nonetheless, the luminescence of the ’caged’ carbon dots can be recovered to different extents, upon ultraviolet illumination, in solution.