posted on 2021-10-08, 05:45authored byXiaodong Zhang, Xiaokai Chen, Yi Guo, Long Gu, Yinglong Wu, Anivind Kaur Bindra, Wei Liang Teo, Fu-Gen Wu, Yanli Zhao
Despite
great efforts in the development of diverse nanomaterials,
a general route to synthesize metal-free chalcogen quantum dots (QDs)
is still lacking. Moreover, the modification of chalcogen QDs is a
bottleneck that severely hinders their applications. Herein, we develop
a facile method to construct different chalcogen QDs (including S
QDs, Se QDs, and Te QDs) with the assistance of thiolates. In addition
to stabilizing chalcogen QDs, the thiolates also endow the chalcogen
QDs with favorable modifiability. Different from most dyes whose fluorescence
is quenched after short-term light irradiation, the prepared chalcogen
QDs have significantly enhanced fluorescence emission under continuous
light irradiation. Taking advantage of the distinctive photoinduced
fluorescence enhancement property, long-time cell imaging with superb
performance is realized using the chalcogen QDs. It is envisioned
that the chalcogen QDs show promising potential as fluorescent materials
in different fields beyond bioimaging.