• Arciniegas, Milena P.
• Manna, Liberato
• Collantes, Cynthia
• Pellegrino, Teresa
• Avugadda, Sahitya Kumar
• Dhanabalan, Balaji
• Silvestri, Niccolo
• Castelli, Andrea
• Baranov, Dmitry
• Imran, Muhammad
• Fernandez, Tamara

Abstract

<p>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 CsPbBr₃nanocrystals 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.</p>

Topics

• perovskite
• impedance spectroscopy
• photoluminescence
• polymer
• toxicity