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

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

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.

• Jezik: Angleški jezik
• Ključne besede: hexagonal boron nitride, single-photon source, color centers, live cells, spectral barcodes, cell tagging
• Vrsta gradiva: Članek v reviji
• Tipologija: 1.01 - Izvirni znanstveni članek
• Organizacija: FS - Fakulteta za strojništvo ; FMF - Fakulteta za matematiko in fiziko
• Status publikacije: Objavljeno
• Različica publikacije: Objavljena publikacija
• Leto izida: 2024
• Št. strani: Str. 4691–4702
• Številčenje: Vol. 16, iss. 9
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-168198
• UDK: 544.522.122
• ISSN pri članku: 2040-3372
• DOI: 10.1039/D3NR05305A
• COBISS.SI-ID: 183750147
• Datum objave v RUL: 02.04.2025

Gradivo je del revije

• Naslov: Nanoscale
• Skrajšan naslov: Nanoscale
• Založnik: Royal Society of Chemistry
• ISSN: 2040-3372
• COBISS.SI-ID: 519834649

Licence

• Licenca: CC BY 3.0, Creative Commons Priznanje avtorstva 3.0 Nedoločena
• Povezava: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.sl
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Sekundarni jezik

• Jezik: Slovenski jezik
• Ključne besede: heksagonalni borov nitrid, vir enofotonskih delcev, barvni centri, žive celice, spektralne črtne kode, označevanje celic