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PROJECT
Recent researches on biological imaging techniques based on fluorescence are now focusing on the use of penetrating and relatively benign Near InfraRed (NIR) light. Upconverting nanoparticles (UCNPs) have the remarkable property to convert NIR light into visible one in an anti-Stoke emission process. Lanthanide based nanocrystals show long-lived emissions whose colors depend on the emitting ions (mainly blue for thulium and green for erbium) due to the incoherent absorption of several NIR photons.
Such phosphors are not suitable a priori for superresolution microscopy as they are notoriously not blinking.
This is the challenge of the BLINK project!
Our main goal is thus to induce a dynamic fluctuation of the nanocrystal’s emission at the single particle level thanks to the presence of photochromic quenchers in its immediate vicinity. For this we are constructing nanohybrid structures based on a luminescent nanocrystals embedded in a dye-loaded shell (organic or inorganic) At the photostationary state powered by the nanoparticle itself and the thermal bath, each dye oscillates randomly between a UV-absorbing, non-quenching and a Visible-absorbing, quenching states. Consequently the instant quenching of the nanoparticle is not constant, leading to a fluctuating emission.
More chemistry ?
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