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Facile Synthesis of Ultrastable Fluorescent Copper Nanoclusters and Their Cellular Imaging Application

Copper nanoclusters (Cu NCs) are generally formed by several to dozens of atoms. Because of wide range of raw materials and cheap prices, Cu NCs have attracted scientists’ special attention. However, Cu NCs tend to undergo oxidation easily. Thus, there is a dire need to develop a synthetic protocol...

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Autores principales: Yan, Wei, Zhang, Jianqiao, Abbas, Muhammad, Li, Yulian, Hussain, Syed Zajif, Mumtaz, Shazia, Song, Zhengwei, Hussain, Irshad, Tan, Bien
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7558839/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32859115
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nano10091678
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author Yan, Wei
Zhang, Jianqiao
Abbas, Muhammad
Li, Yulian
Hussain, Syed Zajif
Mumtaz, Shazia
Song, Zhengwei
Hussain, Irshad
Tan, Bien
author_facet Yan, Wei
Zhang, Jianqiao
Abbas, Muhammad
Li, Yulian
Hussain, Syed Zajif
Mumtaz, Shazia
Song, Zhengwei
Hussain, Irshad
Tan, Bien
author_sort Yan, Wei
collection PubMed
description Copper nanoclusters (Cu NCs) are generally formed by several to dozens of atoms. Because of wide range of raw materials and cheap prices, Cu NCs have attracted scientists’ special attention. However, Cu NCs tend to undergo oxidation easily. Thus, there is a dire need to develop a synthetic protocol for preparing fluorescent Cu NCs with high QY and better stability. Herein, we report a one-step method for preparing stable blue-green fluorescent copper nanoclusters using glutathione (GSH) as both a reducing agent and a stabilizing agent. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and electrospray ionization mass spectrometer (ESI-MS) were used to characterize the resulting Cu NCs. The as-prepared Cu NCs@GSH possess an ultrasmall size (2.3 ± 0.4 nm), blue-green fluorescence with decent quantum yield (6.2%) and good stability. MTT results clearly suggest that the Cu NCs@GSH are biocompatible. After incubated with EB-labeled HEK293T cells, the Cu NCs mainly accumulated in nuclei of the cells, suggesting that the as-prepared Cu NCs could potentially be used as the fluorescent probe for applications in cellular imaging.
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spelling pubmed-75588392020-10-26 Facile Synthesis of Ultrastable Fluorescent Copper Nanoclusters and Their Cellular Imaging Application Yan, Wei Zhang, Jianqiao Abbas, Muhammad Li, Yulian Hussain, Syed Zajif Mumtaz, Shazia Song, Zhengwei Hussain, Irshad Tan, Bien Nanomaterials (Basel) Article Copper nanoclusters (Cu NCs) are generally formed by several to dozens of atoms. Because of wide range of raw materials and cheap prices, Cu NCs have attracted scientists’ special attention. However, Cu NCs tend to undergo oxidation easily. Thus, there is a dire need to develop a synthetic protocol for preparing fluorescent Cu NCs with high QY and better stability. Herein, we report a one-step method for preparing stable blue-green fluorescent copper nanoclusters using glutathione (GSH) as both a reducing agent and a stabilizing agent. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and electrospray ionization mass spectrometer (ESI-MS) were used to characterize the resulting Cu NCs. The as-prepared Cu NCs@GSH possess an ultrasmall size (2.3 ± 0.4 nm), blue-green fluorescence with decent quantum yield (6.2%) and good stability. MTT results clearly suggest that the Cu NCs@GSH are biocompatible. After incubated with EB-labeled HEK293T cells, the Cu NCs mainly accumulated in nuclei of the cells, suggesting that the as-prepared Cu NCs could potentially be used as the fluorescent probe for applications in cellular imaging. MDPI 2020-08-26 /pmc/articles/PMC7558839/ /pubmed/32859115 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nano10091678 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Yan, Wei
Zhang, Jianqiao
Abbas, Muhammad
Li, Yulian
Hussain, Syed Zajif
Mumtaz, Shazia
Song, Zhengwei
Hussain, Irshad
Tan, Bien
Facile Synthesis of Ultrastable Fluorescent Copper Nanoclusters and Their Cellular Imaging Application
title Facile Synthesis of Ultrastable Fluorescent Copper Nanoclusters and Their Cellular Imaging Application
title_full Facile Synthesis of Ultrastable Fluorescent Copper Nanoclusters and Their Cellular Imaging Application
title_fullStr Facile Synthesis of Ultrastable Fluorescent Copper Nanoclusters and Their Cellular Imaging Application
title_full_unstemmed Facile Synthesis of Ultrastable Fluorescent Copper Nanoclusters and Their Cellular Imaging Application
title_short Facile Synthesis of Ultrastable Fluorescent Copper Nanoclusters and Their Cellular Imaging Application
title_sort facile synthesis of ultrastable fluorescent copper nanoclusters and their cellular imaging application
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7558839/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32859115
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nano10091678
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