Silole-Based Red Fluorescent Organic Dots for Bright Two-Photon Fluorescence In vitro Cell and In vivo Blood Vessel Imaging

Robust luminescent dyes with efficient two-photon fluorescence are highly desirable for biological imaging applications, but those suitable for organic dots fabrication are still rare because of aggregation-caused quenching. In this work, a red fluorescent silole, 2,5-bis[5-(dimesitylboranyl)thiophen-2-yl]-1-methyl-1,3,4-triphenylsilole ((MesB)(2)DTTPS), is synthesized and characterized. (MesB)(2)DTTPS exhibits enhanced fluorescence efficiency in nanoaggregates, indicative of aggregation-enhanced emission (AEE). The organic dots fabricated by encapsulating (MesB)(2)DTTPS within lipid-PEG show red fluorescence peaking at 598 nm and a high fluorescence quantum yield of 32%. Upon excitation at 820 nm, the dots show a large two-photon absorption cross section of 3.43 x 10(5) GM, which yields a two-photon action cross section of 1.09 x 10(5) GM. These (MesB)(2)DTTPS dots show good biocompatibility and are successfully applied to one-photon and two-photon fluorescence imaging of MCF-7 cells and two-photon in vivo visualization of the blood vascular of mouse muscle in a high-contrast and noninvasive manner. Moreover, the 3D blood vasculature located at the mouse ear skin with a depth of over 100 m can also be visualized clearly, providing the spatiotemporal information about the whole blood vascular network.