AIEgen-assisted STED nanoscopy and its application for super-resolved cellular visualization (Conference Presentation)

Stimulated emission depletion (STED) nanoscopy is a typical super-resolution imaging technique that has become a powerful tool for visualizing intracellular structures on the nanometer scale. Aggregation-induced emission luminogens (AIEgens) are ideal fluorescent agents for bioimaging and have been widely used for organelle targeting, cellular mapping and tracing. Since AIEgens generally have a large Stokes’ shift, which is beneficial for restraining the fluorescence background induced by the STED light, as well as high photobleaching resistance in their nanoaggregate states, which provides the potential for long-term imaging under a STED beam with high power density, they are ideal fluorescent agents for STED nanoscopy. The STED efficiency of aggregated TPA-T-CyP could reach more than 80%, and the dynamic mitochondrial visualization was achieved on the nanometer scale. Their moving, fission and fussion of mitochondria was clearly observed with a lateral spatial resolution of 74 nm.