Area of research
Materials Chemistry · Biomedical Engineering
Research interest
Research topics from publications: Ligand Engineering of Gold Nanoclusters for NIR-II Imaging; Ratiometric fluorescent detection of sulfide ions in Radix Codonopsis and living cells based on PVP-supported gold/copper nanoclusters with tunable dual emission; Atomically Precise Au32 Clusters for 3D Visualization of Pathological Progression in Sepsis-Induced Multi-Organ Injury. Representative work: Near-infrared-II (NIR-II) imaging has shown great potential in medical diagnosis and surgical navigation, but developing safe, photostable, high-brightness molecular probes remains a great challenge. Due to their ultrasmall size resulting in highly efficient renal clearance, gold nanoclusters have shown great clinical potential. In this work, we systematically explored the effect of different ligands on the luminescence and bioactivity of gold nanoclusters. Our results show that gold nanoclusters protected by thioglycolic acid (TGA) and 6-mercaptohexanoic acid (MHA) exhibit the strongest fluorescence, while 3-mercaptopropionic acid (MPA)- and sodium sulfide (Na2S)-protected gold nanoclusters Sepsis has a high global incidence and mortality, requiring early identification and assessment of organ damage. We present a NIR-II 3D visualization strategy using atomically precise fluorescent Au32 clusters to detect sepsis-induced multi-organ injury. These clusters emit strong fluorescence at 1044 nm with extended photostability (up to 300 min). Integrated with light-sheet microscopy, the method achieves rapid 3D imaging with a 2 μm isotropic resolution and 500 μm tissue penetration. It reveals significant pathological changes in two sepsis models, including intestinal villi shortening (to 32.7% and 43.8%) and renal tubule swelling (1.9× and 2.1×). Blood vessel integrity in pulmonary bro