Auto-Phase-Locked Time-Resolved Luminescence Detection: Principles, Applications, and Prospects.

Qisheng Deng,Xuewen Shu,Zece Zhu

doi:10.3389/fchem.2020.00562

Abstract

Time-resolved luminescence measurement is a useful technique which can eliminate the background signals from scattering and short-lived autofluorescence. However, the relative instruments always require pulsed excitation sources and high-speed detectors. Moreover, the excitation and detecting shutter should be precisely synchronized by electronic phase matching circuitry, leading to expensiveness and high-complexity. To make time-resolved luminescence instruments simple and cheap, the automatic synchronization method was developed by using a mechanical chopper acted as both of the pulse generator and detection shutter. Therefore, the excitation and detection can be synchronized and locked automatically as the optical paths fixed. In this paper, we first introduced the time-resolved luminescence measurements and review the progress and current state of this field. Then, we discussed low-cost time-resolved techniques, especially chopper-based time-resolved luminescence detections. After that, we focused on auto-phase-locked method and some of its meaningful applications, such as time-gated luminescence imaging, spectrometer, and luminescence lifetime detection. Finally, we concluded with a brief outlook for auto-phase-locked time-resolved luminescence detection systems.

Highlights

Time-resolved techniques have been widely applied to the study of ultrafast photophysical processes (Wirth, 1990; Walker et al, 2013), the research of temporal behavior of chemical systems (Piatkowski et al, 2014), biological detection and imaging (Connally and Piper, 2008; Berezin and Achilefu, 2010; Bünzli, 2010; Cicchi and Pavone, 2011; Strat et al, 2011; Becker, 2012; Yang et al, 2013; Grichine et al, 2014; Lemmetyinen et al, 2014; Lu et al, 2014; Bui et al, 2017; Luo et al, 2017; Zhang et al, 2018; Zhu et al, 2018b; Liu et al, 2019)
Time-gated luminescence detection is known as one kind of time-resolved method, which can operate detecting gate after pulse excitation with a delay time (Connally and Piper, 2008; Lemmetyinen et al, 2014; Zhang et al, 2018)
Since the luminescence lifetimes of many probes are sensitive to microenvironments, lifetime imaging can exhibit significant differences that covered by luminescence intensity, and is more and more widely used in biological imaging to observe functional and molecular events (Connally and Piper, 2008; Berezin and Achilefu, 2010; Bünzli, 2010; Cicchi and Pavone, 2011; Strat et al, 2011; Becker, 2012; Damayanti et al, 2013; Yang et al, 2013; Grichine et al, 2014; Lemmetyinen et al, 2014; Lu et al, 2014; Bui et al, 2017; Luo et al, 2017; Wang et al, 2017; Zhang et al, 2018; Zhu et al, 2018b; Liu et al, 2019)

Summary

Introduction

Time-resolved techniques have been widely applied to the study of ultrafast photophysical processes (Wirth, 1990; Walker et al, 2013), the research of temporal behavior of chemical systems (Piatkowski et al, 2014), biological detection and imaging (Connally and Piper, 2008; Berezin and Achilefu, 2010; Bünzli, 2010; Cicchi and Pavone, 2011; Strat et al, 2011; Becker, 2012; Yang et al, 2013; Grichine et al, 2014; Lemmetyinen et al, 2014; Lu et al, 2014; Bui et al, 2017; Luo et al, 2017; Zhang et al, 2018; Zhu et al, 2018b; Liu et al, 2019).

Results

Conclusion