Intracellular biocompatible hexagonal boron nitride quantum emitters as single-photon sources and barcodes

Kavčič, Aljaž (author), Podlipec, Rok (author), Krišelj, Ana (author), Jelen, Andreja (author), Vella, Daniele (author), Humar, Matjaž (author)

Color centers in hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) have been emerging as a multifunctional platform for various optical applications including quantum information processing, quantum computing and imaging. Simultaneously, due to its biocompatibility and biodegradability hBN is a promising material for biomedical applications. In this work, we demonstrate single-photon emission from hBN color centers embedded inside live cells and their application to cellular barcoding. The generation and internalization of multiple color centers into cells was performed via simple and scalable procedure while keeping the cells unharmed. The emission from live cells was observed as multiple diffraction-limited spots, which exhibited excellent single-photon characteristics with high single-photon purity of 0.1 and superb emission stability without photobleaching or spectral shifts over several hours. Due to different emission wavelengths and peak widths of the color centers, they were employed as barcodes. We term them Quantum Photonic Barcodes (QPBs). Each QPB can exist in one out of 470 possible distinguishable states and a combination of a few QPBs per cell can be used to uniquely tag virtually an unlimited number of cells. The barcodes developed here offer some excellent properties, including ease of production by a single-step procedure, biocompatibility and biodegradability, emission stability, no photobleaching, small size and a huge number of unique barcodes. This work provides a basis for the use of hBN color centers for robust barcoding of cells and due to the single photon emission, presented concepts could in future be extended to quantum-limited sensing and super-resolution imaging.

• Language: English
• Keywords: hexagonal boron nitride, single-photon source, color centers, live cells, spectral barcodes, cell tagging
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FS - Faculty of Mechanical Engineering; FMF - Faculty of Mathematics and Physics
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2024
• Number of pages: Str. 4691–4702
• Numbering: Vol. 16, iss. 9
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-168198
• UDC: 544.522.122
• ISSN on article: 2040-3372
• DOI: 10.1039/D3NR05305A
• COBISS.SI-ID: 183750147
• Publication date in RUL: 02.04.2025

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Nanoscale
• Shortened title: Nanoscale
• Publisher: Royal Society of Chemistry
• ISSN: 2040-3372
• COBISS.SI-ID: 519834649

Licences

• License: CC BY 3.0, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported
• Link: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
• Description: You are free to reproduce and redistribute the material in any medium or format. You are free to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: heksagonalni borov nitrid, vir enofotonskih delcev, barvni centri, žive celice, spektralne črtne kode, označevanje celic