Single-molecule analysis of fluorescent carbon dots towards localization-based super-resolution microscopy

The advancement of high-resolution bioimaging has always been dependent on the discovery of bright and easily available fluorescent probes. Fluorescent carbon nanodots, an interesting class of relatively new nanomaterials, have emerged as a versatile alternative due to their superior optical properties, non-toxicity, cell penetrability and easy routes to synthesis. Although a plethora of reports is available on bioimaging using carbon dots, single-molecule-based super-resolution imaging is rare in the literature. In this study, we have systematically characterized the single-molecule fluorescence of three carbon dots and compared them with a standard fluorescent probe. Each of these carbon dots showed a long-lived dark state in the presence of an electron acceptor. The electron transfer mechanism was investigated in single-molecule as well as in ensemble experiments. The average on-off rate between the fluorescent bright and dark states, which is one of the important parameters for single-molecule localization-based super-resolution microscopy, was measured by changing the laser power. We report that the photon budget and on-off rate of these carbon dots were good enough to achieve single-molecule localization with a precision of ~35 nm.