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Updated: Dec 11, 2025
Compact Quantum Dots for Single-molecule Imaging
Published on: October 9, 2012
Sub-10 nm Aggregation-Induced Emission Quantum Dots Assembled by Microfluidics for Enhanced Tumor Targeting and
Xuanyu Li1,2, Menglei Zha2, Yaxi Li2
1National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, The University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 11 Zhongguancun Beiyitiao, Beijing, 100190, P. R. China.
Abstract:
A robust platform is developed to assemble sub-10 nm organic aggregation-induced emission (AIE) particles using four different AIE luminogens (AIEgens) with emissions from green to the second near-infrared window (NIR-II). They are called AIE quantum dots (QDs) to distinguish from typical AIE dots which are larger than 25 nm. Compared with AIE dots that are larger than 25 nm, AIE QDs allow more efficient cellular uptake and imaging without surface modification of any membrane-penetrating peptides or other targeting molecules. NIR-II AIEgens, which have nearly no background fluorescence from organisms, are used to demonstrate that AIE QDs can achieve high contrast at the tumor as small as 80 mm3 and evade the liver more efficiently than AIE dots. AIE QDs hold a good promise for sensitive and precise diagnosis of the latent solid tumor in clinical medicine with much lower off-targeting to the liver than AIE dots.
