Chemical Transformation of Lead Halide Perovskite into Insoluble, Less Cytotoxic, and Brightly Luminescent CsPbBr3/CsPb2Br5 Composite Nanocrystals for Cell Imaging

Sunqi Lou; Zhi Zhou; Tongtong Xuan; Huili Li; Ju Jiao; Hongwu Zhang; Romain Gautier; Jing Wang

doi:10.1021/acsami.9b05484

Chemical Transformation of Lead Halide Perovskite into Insoluble, Less Cytotoxic, and Brightly Luminescent CsPbBr₃/CsPb₂Br₅ Composite Nanocrystals for Cell Imaging

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2019 Jul 10;11(27):24241-24246. doi: 10.1021/acsami.9b05484. Epub 2019 Jun 27.

Authors

Sunqi Lou¹, Zhi Zhou², Tongtong Xuan¹, Huili Li³, Ju Jiao¹, Hongwu Zhang⁴, Romain Gautier^{1

5}, Jing Wang¹

Affiliations

¹ Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Bioinorganic and Synthetic Chemistry, State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies, School of Chemistry, School of Materials Science and Engineering , Sun Yat-Sen University , Guangzhou 510275 , China.
² Hunan Provincial Engineering Technology Research Center for Optical Agriculture College of Science , Hunan Agricultural University , Changsha 410128 , China.
³ Engineering Research Center for Nanophotonics & Advanced Instrument, Ministry of Education, School of Physics and Materials Science , East China Normal University , Shanghai 200062 , China.
⁴ Key Lab of Urban Pollutant Conversion , Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Xiamen , Fujian 361021 , China.
⁵ Institut des Matériaux Jean Rouxel (IMN) , Université de Nantes , 2 rue de la Houssinière , BP 32229, 44322 Nantes cedex 3 , France.

PMID: 31245989
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.9b05484

Abstract

Lead halide perovskite nanocrystals (NCs) have been widely investigated owing to their potential applications as optoelectronic devices. However, these materials suffer from poor water stability, which make them impossible to be applied in biomedicine. Here, insoluble CsPbBr₃/CsPb₂Br₅ composite NCs were successfully synthesized via simple water-assisted chemical transformation of perovskite NCs. Water plays two key roles in this synthesis: (i) stripping CsBr from CsPbBr₃/Cs₄PbBr₆ and (ii) modifying the coordination number of Pb²⁺ (six in CsPbBr₃ and Cs₄PbBr₆ vs eight in CsPb₂Br₅). The as-prepared CsPbBr₃/CsPb₂Br₅ composite NCs not only retain the photoluminescence quantum yield (up to 80%) and a narrow full width to half-maximum of 16 nm, but also present excellent water stability and low cytotoxicity. With these properties, the CsPbBr₃/CsPb₂Br₅ composite NCs were demonstrated as efficient fluorescent probes in live HeLa cells. We believe that our finding not only provides a new method to prepare insoluble, narrow-band, and brightly luminescent CsPbBr₃/CsPb₂Br₅ composite NCs, but also extend the potential applications of lead halides in biomedicine.

Keywords: cell imaging; nanocrystals; perovskite; photoluminescence; water stability.