A Photoinduced Nonadiabatic Decay-Guided Molecular Motor Triggers Effective Photothermal Conversion for Cancer
Jen-Shyang Ni1,2, Xun Zhang1, Guang Yang1
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, SUSTech Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), Shenzhen, 518055, China.
Abstract:
It remains highly challenging to identify small molecule-based photothermal agents with a high photothermal conversion efficiency (PTCE). Herein, we adopt a double bond-based molecular motor concept to develop a new class of small photothermal agents to break the current design bottleneck. As the double-bond is twisted by strong twisted intramolecular charge transfer (TICT) upon irradiation, the excited agents can deactivate non-radiatively through the conical intersection (CI) of internal conversion, which is called photoinduced nonadiabatic decay. Such agents possess a high PTCE of 90.0 %, facilitating low-temperature photothermal therapy in the presence of a heat shock protein 70 inhibitor. In addition, the behavior and mechanism of NIR laser-triggered molecular motions for generating heat through the CI pathway have been further understood through theoretical and experimental evidence, providing a design principle for highly efficient photothermal and photoacoustic agents.
