S. Aly, Mohamed Eita, J. I. Khan
May 28, 2014
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Journal
Journal of Physical Chemistry C
Abstract
Fluorescence enhancement of organic fluorophores shows tremendous potential to improve image contrast in fluorescence-based bioimaging. Here, we present an experimental study of the interaction of two cationic porphyrins, meso-tetrakis(1-methylpyridinium-4-yl)porphyrin chloride (TMPyP) and meso-tetrakis(4-N,N,N-trimethylanilinium)porphyrin chloride (TMAP), with cationic surfactant-stabilized zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO NPs) based on several steady-state and time-resolved techniques. We show the first experimental measurements demonstrating a clear transition from pronounced fluorescence enhancement to charge transfer (CT) complex formation by simply changing the nature and location of the positive charge of the meso substituent of the cationic porphyrins. For TMPyP, we observe a sixfold increase in the fluorescence intensity of TMPyP upon addition of ZnO NPs. Our experimental results indicate that the electrostatic binding of TMPyP with the surface of ZnO NPs increases the symmetry of the porphyrin macr...