Condensed state fluorescence switching of hexaarylbiimidazole-tetraphenylethene conjugate for super-resolution fluorescence nanolocalization

Abstract

This paper reported the synthesis of hexaarylbiimidazole-tetraphenylethene (HABI-TPE) conjugated photochromic fluorophore, which simultaneously exhibited photochromic property, condensed state enhanced emission and reversible fluorescence switching. Upon UV irradiation, a green species with a broad absorption band between 550 and 800 nm ( the absorption maximum at 697 nm ) was observed, which readily faded to colorless in the darkness. HABI-TPE launched strong fluorescence with the maximum emission wavelength at 520–580 nm under the excitation with 450–500 nm visible light in condensed state, which is in contrast to nonfluorescence in solution. The maximum emission wavelength in condensed state was dependent of excitation wavelength. More interestingly, HABI-TPE exhibited reversible fluorescence switching upon alternating irradiation with blue or near-UV light (wavelength less than 490 nm) and green light (more than 490 nm) in condensed state. Our evaluation demonstrated that HABI-TPE exhibited great photoswitchable fluorescence, which is a promising photoswitchable fluorophore for localization-based super-resolution microscopy, evidencing by resolving nanostructures with sub-100 nm resolution in polymethylmethacrylate films.

Keywords

fluorescence switching / super-resolution imaging / nanolocalization / hexaarylbiimidazole (HABI) / tetraphenylethene

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (Grant Nos. 21174045 and 20874025), the National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2013CB922104). M.P.A. acknowledges the NSFC Research Fellowship for International Young Scientists (Nos. 21150110141 and 212111128) and the Special Fellowship of China Post-doctoral Science Foundation (No. 2012T50642). M.Q.Z. acknowledges the Open Program for Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences (BNLMS) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (HUST2010MS101). We also thank Analytical and Testing Center of Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

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2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg