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Updated: Dec 18, 2025

Biomolecular Imaging of Cellular Uptake of Nanoparticles using Multimodal Nonlinear Optical Microscopy
Published on: May 16, 2022
Ultraviolet Carbon Nanodots Providing a Dual-Mode Spectral Matching Platform for Synergistic Enhancement of the
Liman Sai1, Shuping Jiao2, Jianwen Yang1
1Department of Physics, Shanghai Normal University, Guilin Road 100, Shanghai 200234, China.
Abstract:
The sensing of chromium(VI) (Cr(VI)) is highly desired, due to its toxic and carcinogenic effects upon human health. Fluorescent probes, especially carbon nanodots (CNDs), have been widely used for Cr(VI) sensing via the inner filter effect (IFE). However, improving the sensitivity of these probes remains a difficult issue. In this work, CNDs derived from β-Lactoglobulin were applied as an ultrasensitive fluorescent probe for Cr(VI). With 260 nm excitation, the CNDs showed multi-band emission, including an ultraviolet 360 nm peak. The spectral matching of the CNDs with Cr(VI) led to synergistic suppression of both the excitation and emission light in the fluorescent sensing. As a consequence, the CNDs showed high sensitivity toward Cr(VI), the detection limit reaching as low as 20 nM. Moreover, taking advantage of the multi-emissive property of the CNDs, the synergistic effect was proven in an IFE-based sensing system, which might be extended to the design of other kinds of fluorescent probes.

