One-pot synthesis of AIE based bismuth sulfide nanotheranostics for fluorescence imaging and photothermal therapy

Photothermal therapy (PTT) has been widely investigated as a minimally invasive strategy for cancer therapy due to its favorable biosafety. Nevertheless, there is only limited success in the exploration of nanotheranostics composing of both fluorescent dyes and PTT agents since their fluorescence would always be quenched. Herein, a facile one-pot synthesis approach of Aggregation Induced Emission (AIE) based Bi₂S₃ nanotheranostics is described, and their effectiveness for fluorescence imaging and simultaneous PTT has been demonstrated. AIE incorporated BSA was employed for the biomineralization synthesis of Bi₂S₃ nanoparticles (NPs), which endowed as-prepared BSA-PhENH₂-Bi₂S₃ NPs with excellent biocompatibility and ultrasmall size. Moreover, the resulted NPs also exhibited remarkable photothermal effect and photostability. Importantly, BSA-PhENH₂-Bi₂S₃ NPs could efficiently get into HepG2 cells, and light their cytoplasm region with bright fluorescence owning to the superb fluorescence property of AIE, which could simultaneously prompt cancer cells death under an 808nm laser irradiation. This work provides a universal approach for the fabrication of AIE based nanotheranostics via albumin-mediated biomineralization method, and the as-prepared BSA-PhENH₂-Bi₂S₃ NPs possess great potential for cancer theranostics.