Scalable synthesis of multicolour conjugated polymer nanoparticles via Suzuki-Miyaura polymerisation in a miniemulsion and application in bioimaging
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Authors
Colleges, School and Institutes
Abstract
Suzuki cross-coupling polymerisation of aryldibromides and aryldiboronate esters in a sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS)-stabilised miniemulsion provides a versatile and direct route to fluorescent conjugated polymer nanoparticles (CPNs). These nanoparticles have a conjugated backbone based on poly(9,9-dioctylfluorene) (PFO), however, significant structural diversity is introduced by incorporation of electron withdrawing, heterocyclic comonomers (5–50 mol.%) in order to tune the emission wavelengths from blue to far-red/near-infrared. The robust nature of the polymerisation methodology allows for rapid assessment of the relationship between polymer composition, chain morphology and optical properties of the resultant CPNs. Moreover, the CPNs (after a simple and rapid purification step) can be used directly in fluorescence-based intracellular labelling experiments (in HCT116 cells), in which they display low cytotoxicity at biologically-useful concentrations.
Details
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 69-77 |
Journal | Reactive and Functional Polymers |
Volume | 107 |
Early online date | 30 Aug 2016 |
Publication status | Published - 1 Oct 2016 |
Keywords
- conjugated polymer nanoparticles, miniemulsion, Suzuki-Miyaura polymerisation, scaleable, bioimaging