Silica Nanoparticles with Up-conversion Fluorescence Based on Triplet-Triplet Annihilation Mechanism for Specific Recognition of Apoptosis Cells

Discrimination of live and apoptotic cells is a crucial task in the research of pharmacology, biology, pathology, and medicine science. Recently, up-conversion (UC) luminescent materials have appealed much attention due to their unique ability to convert low energy excitation photons to high energy ones. However, UC fluorescence has not been employed in the field of discrimination of live and apoptotic cells. We present a facile and costless Stober method to fabricate robust silica nanoparticles (SiO2 UCNPs) exhibiting several merits, such as narrow size distribution and UC luminescence. SiO2 UCNPs could discriminate live and apoptosis cells by taking advantage of the unique surface property of SiO2 UCNPs for the first time. This work is also the first demonstration of the use of single photon excited UC fluorescence derived from nanoparticles for biological recognition of a specific type of cells.