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Highly Emitting Perovskite Nanocrystals with 2-Year Stability in Water through an Automated Polymer Encapsulation for Bioimaging.

Sahitya Kumar AvugaddaAndrea CastelliBalaji DhanabalanTamara FernandezNiccolo SilvestriCynthia CollantesDmitry BaranovMuhammad ImranLiberato MannaTeresa PellegrinoMilena P Arciniegas
Published in: ACS nano (2022)
Lead-based halide perovskite nanocrystals are highly luminescent materials, but their sensitivity to humid environments and their biotoxicity are still important challenges to solve. Here, we develop a stepwise approach to encapsulate representative CsPbBr 3 nanocrystals into water-soluble polymer capsules. We show that our protocol can be extended to nanocrystals coated with different ligands, enabling an outstanding high photoluminescence quantum yield of ∼60% that is preserved over two years in capsules dispersed in water. We demonstrate that this on-bench strategy can be implemented on an automated platform with slight modifications, granting access to a faster and more reproducible fabrication process. Also, we reveal that the capsules can be exploited as photoluminescent probes for cell imaging at a dose as low as 0.3 μg Pb /mL that is well below the toxicity threshold for Pb and Cs ions. Our approach contributes to expanding significantly the fields of applications of these luminescent materials including biology and biomedicine.
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