Self-healing Encapsulation Strategy for Preparing Highly Stable, Functionalized Quantum-Dot Barcodes

Abstract

Quantum dot (QD) barcodes are becoming an urgent requirement for researchers and clinicians to obtain high-density information in multiplexed suspension (bead-based) assay. However, how to improve the stability of quantum dot barcodes is a longstanding issue. Here, we present a new self-healing encapsulation strategy to generate functionalized uniform quantum dots barcodes with high physical and chemical stability. This efficient and facile strategy could make porous polymer microspheres self-heal to encapsulate QDs via the thermal motion and interaction of the molecular chains. Consequently, the new strategy solved especially the QDs leakage problem and improved the chemical stability under different pH physiological conditions as well as the longtime storage stability. In the meantime, the encoding capacity and the spatial distribution uniformity of quantum dots could be also improved. Furthermore, immunofluorescence assays for alpha fetoprotein (AFP) detections indicated that carboxyl groups on the surface of QD-encoded microspheres could facilitate efficient attachment of biomacromolecules.