Abstract
Photonic crystal (PC) barcodes are a new type of spectrum-encoding microcarriers used in multiplex high-throughput bioassays, such as broad analysis of biomarkers for clinical diagnosis, gene expression, and cell culture. Unfortunately, most of these existing PC barcodes suffered from undesired features, including difficult spectrum-signal acquisition, weak mechanical strength, and high ontology fluorescence, which limited their development to real applications. To address these limitations, we report a new type of structural color-encoded PC barcodes. The barcodes are fabricated by the assembly of monodisperse polydopamine- (PDA-) coated silica (PDA@SiO2) nanoparticles using a droplet-based microfluidic technique and followed by pyrolysis of PDA@SiO2 (C@SiO2) barcodes. Because of the templated carbonization of adhesive PDA, the prepared C@SiO2 PC beads were endowed with simultaneous easy-to-identify structural color, high mechanical strength, and ultralow ontology fluorescence. We demonstrated that the structural colored C@SiO2 barcodes not only maintained a high structural stability and good biocompatibility during the coculturing with fibroblasts and tumor cells capture but also achieved an enhanced fluorescent-reading signal-to-noise ratio in the fluorescence-reading detection. These features make the C@SiO2 PC barcodes versatile for expansive application in fluorescence-reading-based multibioassays.
Highlights
Multiplex assay has achieved great progress in detection and quantification of a broad variety of analytes in diverse practical applications, especially in biomedical-related fields [1,2,3]
We present a new type of carbon-bonded high-strength structural colored photonic crystal (PC) barcodes with desired capabilities; they simultaneously perform easy-to-identify structural color, high mechanical strength, and ultralow ontology fluorescence, as well as good biocompatibility for cell culturing and capture and multiple analysis
C@SiO2 PC beads were fabricated by the evaporation of droplet templates containing monodisperse PDA@SiO2 nanoparticles followed by pyrolysis
Summary
Multiplex assay has achieved great progress in detection and quantification of a broad variety of analytes in diverse practical applications, especially in biomedical-related fields [1,2,3]. Benefiting from the spherical nanoplatform and stable characteristic reflection peak, PC barcodes have recently achieved significant developments in multiplex three-dimensional (3D) scale analysis, including cell capture [9,10,11], bacteria analysis [12], drug screening [13], and bioassays [14,15,16,17]. PC beads were always encoded by the reflection spectrum; the encoded information only existed at the spherical vertex based on the Bragg diffraction mechanism [18].
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