Visible-light-excited and europium-emissive nanoparticles for highly-luminescent bioimaging in vivo

Europium(III)-based material showing special milliseconds photoluminescence lifetime has been considered as an ideal time-gated luminescence probe for bioimaging, but is still limited in application in luminescent small-animal bioimaging in vivo. Here, a water-soluble, stable, highly-luminescent nanosystem, Ir-Eu-MSN (MSN = mesoporous silica nanoparticles, Ir-Eu = [Ir(dfppy)2(pic-OH)]3Eu·2H2O, dfppy = 2-(2,4-difluorophenyl)pyridine, pic-OH = 3-hydroxy-2-carboxypyridine), was developed by an in situ coordination reaction to form an insoluble dinuclear iridium(III) complex-sensitized-europium(III) emissive complex within mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) which had high loading efficiency. Compared with the usual approach of physical adsorption, this in-situ reaction strategy provided 20-fold the loading efficiency (43.2%) of the insoluble Ir-Eu complex in MSNs. These nanoparticles in solid state showed bright red luminescence with high quantum yield of 55.2%, and the excitation window extended up to 470 nm. These Ir-Eu-MSN nanoparticles were used for luminescence imaging in living cells under excitation at 458 nm with confocal microscopy, which was confirmed by flow cytometry. Furthermore, the Ir-Eu-MSN nanoparticles were successfully applied into high-contrast luminescent lymphatic imaging in vivo under low power density excitation of 5 mW cm−2. This synthetic method provides a universal strategy of combining hydrophobic complexes with hydrophilic MSNs for in vivo bioimaging.