Abstract
The photophysical properties of gold nanoparticles, AuNPs, with sizes of 13, 50 and 100 nm in diameter, coated with surface-active ruthenium complexes have been studied to investigate the effect of the distance of the ruthenium luminescent centre from the gold surface. Luminescence lifetimes of the three ruthenium probes, RuS1, RuS6 and RuS12, with different length spacer units between the surface active groups and the ruthenium centre were taken. The metal complexes were attached to AuNP13, AuNP50 and AuNP100 via thiol groups using a method of precoating the nanoparticles with a fluorinated surfactant. The luminescence lifetime of the longer spacer unit complex, RuS12, was enhanced by 70% upon attachment to the AuNP when compared to the increase of the short and medium linker unit complexes, RuS1 (20%) and (RuS6 40%) respectively. The effect of the surfactant in the lifetime increase of the ruthenium coated AuNPs was shown to be larger for the medium spacer probe, RuS6. There was no effect of the change of the size of the AuNPs from 13 to 50 or 100 nm.
Highlights
Gold nanoparticles, AuNPs, are ideal probes for cellular imaging based on their high electron density, which allows multimodal imaging microscopies to be used and improved spatial resolution in detection as opposed to molecular probes
The AuNPs were characterised by the speci c surface plasmon resonance (SPR) band in the visible of the absorption spectrum, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), dynamic light scattering (DLS) sizing and zeta potential measurements (ESI†)
We have demonstrated the effect of the distance of thiol-functionalised ruthenium complexes from the AuNP surface on the luminescence properties of the nanoparticles
Summary
AuNPs, are ideal probes for cellular imaging based on their high electron density, which allows multimodal imaging microscopies to be used and improved spatial resolution in detection as opposed to molecular probes. In our approach the uorosurfactant coating of the particles has been shown to have the effect of protecting the ruthenium probe excited state from quenching by oxygen, increasing the lifetime of the complex on the nanoparticles.
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