Magnetic-NIR Persistent Luminescent Dual-Modal ZGOCS@MSNs@Gd₂O₃ Core–Shell Nanoprobes For In Vivo Imaging

Recently, Gd 3+ -based NIR persistent luminescence nanoparticles have been proposed as highly promising multimodal nanoprobes for full-scale visualization medical techniques in early diagnosis of cancer. However, they still face with some problems, such as hampering further functionalization for the loss of available surface, shortening plasma half-life of the probe caused by inevitable size increase, and reducing SNR because of significant persistent intensity loss. In this study, a novel core–shell structure Gd 3+ -based NIR persistent luminescence multimodal probe ZGOCS@MSNs@Gd 2 O 3 for T 1 -weighted MR imaging and NIR persistent luminescence imaging was successfully synthesized using MSNs as the reaction vessels for ZGOCS nanoparticles and the core for Gd 2 O 3 shell. Compared with previously reported Gd 3+ -based NIR persistent luminescence-based multimodal nanoprobes, the as-prepared nanoparticles enable surface available, no persistent intensity loss and only a slight size increase. Moreover, this multifunctional nanoprobe not only retains excellent NIR persistent luminescence properties with rechargeable ability, but also possesses high longitudinal relaxivity via the Gd 2 O 3 shell, positioning ZGOCS@MSNs@Gd 2 O 3 as highly promising nanoprobe for future multimodal bioimaging.