Exploiting fast exciton diffusion in dye-doped polymer nanoparticles to engineer efficient photoswitching

Photoswitching of bright fluorescent nanoparticles opens new possibilities for bioimaging with superior temporal and spatial resolution. However, efficient photoswitching of nanoparticles is hard to achieve using Forster resonance energy transfer (FRET) to a photochromic dye, because the particle size is usually larger than the Forster radius. Here, we propose to exploit the exciton diffusion within the FRET donor dyes to boost photoswitching efficiency in dye-doped polymer nanoparticles. To this end, we utilized bulky hydrophobic counterions that prevent self-quenching and favor communication of octadecyl rhodamine B dyes inside a polymer matrix of poly(D,L-lactide-co-glycolide). Among tested counterions, only perfluorinated tetraphenylborate that favors the exciton diffusion enables high photoswitching efficiency (on/off ratio similar to 20). The switching improves with donor dye loading and requires only 0.1-0.3 wt % of a diphenylethene photochromic dye. Our nanoparticles were validated both in solution and at the single-particle level. The proposed concept paves the way to new efficient photoswitchable nanomaterials.