title: Aziridinyl Fluorophores Demonstrate Bright Fluorescence and Superior Photostability by Effectively Inhibiting Twisted Intramolecular Charge Transfer.
abstract: Replacing conventional dialkylamino substituents with a three-membered aziridine ring in naphthalimide leads to significantly enhanced brightness and photostability by effectively suppressing twisted intramolecular charge transfer formation. This replacement is generalizable in other chemical families of fluorophores, such as coumarin, phthalimide, and nitrobenzoxadiazole dyes. In highly polar fluorophores, we show that aziridinyl dyes even outperform their azetidinyl analogues in aqueous solution. We also proposed one simple mechanism that can explain the vulnerability of quantum yield to hydrogen bond interactions in protonic solvents in various fluorophore families. Such knowledge is a critical step toward developing high-performance fluorophores for advanced fluorescence imaging.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Separation Science for Analytical Chemistry, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences , 457 Zhongshan Road, Dalian 116023, China.|Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), 1 CREATE Way, Singapore 138602.
authors.forename: Xiaogang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Fine Chemicals, Dalian University of Technology , 2 Linggong Road, Dalian 116012, China.
authors.forename: Qinglong
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Qiao
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Separation Science for Analytical Chemistry, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences , 457 Zhongshan Road, Dalian 116023, China.
authors.forename: Wenming
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Tian
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Separation Science for Analytical Chemistry, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences , 457 Zhongshan Road, Dalian 116023, China.
authors.forename: Wenjuan
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Separation Science for Analytical Chemistry, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences , 457 Zhongshan Road, Dalian 116023, China.
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), 1 CREATE Way, Singapore 138602.|Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, Vanderbilt University , Nashville, Tennessee 37235, United States.
authors.forename: Matthew J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Lang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Separation Science for Analytical Chemistry, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences , 457 Zhongshan Road, Dalian 116023, China.
authors.forename: Zhaochao
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Xu