Articolo in rivista, 2020, ENG, 10.1002/jbio.202000272

Time-gated luminescence imaging of positively chargedpoly-l-lysine-coated highly microporous silicon nanoparticles in living Hydra polyp

Schiattarella, Chiara; Moretta, Rosalba; Defforge, Thomas; Gautier, Gael; Della Ventura, Bartolomeo; Terracciano, Monica; Tortiglione, Claudia; Fardella, Federica; Maddalena, Pasqualino; De Stefano, Luca; Velotta, Raffaele; Rea, Ilaria

Univ Naples Federico II; CNR; Univ Tours; Univ Naples Federico II; CNR; Univ Naples Federico II

The development of non-toxic fluorescent agents alternative to heavy metal-based semiconductor quantum dots represents a relevant topic in biomedical research and in particular in the bioimaging field. Herein, highly luminescent Si-H terminal microporous silicon nanoparticles with mu s-lived photoemission are chemically modified with a two step process and successfully used as label-free probes for in vivo time-gated luminescence imaging. In this context,Hydra vulgarisis used as model organism for in vivo study and validity assessment. The application of time gating allows to pursue an effective sorting of the signals, getting rid of the most common sources of noise that are fast-decay tissue autofluorescence and excitation scattering within the tissue. Indeed, an enhancement by a factor similar to 20 in the image signal-to-noise ratio can be estimated.

Journal of biophotonics (Print) 13 (12)

Keywords

in vivo imaging, nanomaterials, photoluminescence, porous silicon nanoparticles, time-gated luminescence

CNR authors

Moretta Rosalba, Schiattarella Chiara, Tortiglione Claudia, De Stefano Luca, Rea Ilaria

CNR institutes

ISASI – Istituto di Scienze Applicate e Sistemi Intelligenti "Eduardo Caianiello"