Facile fabrication of luminescent organic dots by thermolysis of citric acid in urea melt, and their use for cell staining and polyelectrolyte microcapsule labelling

• Nadezhda M. Zholobak,
• Anton L. Popov,
• Alexander B. Shcherbakov,
• Nelly R. Popova,
• Mykhailo M. Guzyk,
• Valeriy P. Antonovich,
• Alla V. Yegorova,
• Yuliya V. Scrypynets,
• Inna I. Leonenko,
• Alexander Ye. Baranchikov and
• Vladimir K. Ivanov

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2016, 7, 1905–1917, doi:10.3762/bjnano.7.182

• General and Inorganic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow 119991, Russia National Research Tomsk State University, Tomsk 634050, Russia 10.3762/bjnano.7.182 Abstract Luminescent organic dots (O-dots) were synthesized via a one-pot, solvent-free thermolysis of citric acid in urea melt

• applications of O-dots for alive/fixed cell staining and labelling of layer-by-layer polyelectrolyte microcapsules were evaluated. Keywords: cell culture; citric acid; layer-by-layer (LbL)-microcapsules; luminescence; organic dots (O-dots); staining; toxicity; Introduction Luminescent nanosized semiconductor

• -dots are not made only of carbon, but also contain other elements, including hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. Fluorescent sites of C-dots are usually organic molecules bound by intermolecular or covalent forces. Therefore, these nanostructures should, more precisely, be called organic dots (O-dots), or