Thus, a rhodamine core, which is already quite photostable as it is, and an intramolecular stabilizer – a 4-nitrobenzyl or a 4-nitrobenzylthio group were combined to give potentially “everlasting dyes”. Small-molecule protective agents and/or auxiliary groups were attached at two different sites of the dye's scaffold.
After the family was further extended, the true grounds of this performance became clear.
The authors took an independent and closer look at the family of red-emitting rhodamine dyes known for a decade due to their excellent performance in STED microscopy. This study showcases the potential of PAINT-like strategies such as iPAINT to visualize multicomponent dynamic systems in their native environment with an easy, synthesis-free approach and high spatial resolution. The staining of the blocks, maintained by the lack of exchange of the dyes, permits the imaging of complex structures for multiple days. The quasi-permanent adsorption of the dye to the polymer is exploited to identify block-like arrangements within supramolecular fibers, which was obtained upon mixing homo-polymers that were pre-stained with different colors. The non-covalent staining, typical of iPAINT, allows the investigation of supramolecular polymers’ structure in-situ without any chemical modification. Building upon our previous work, which enabled Photo-Activation Localization Microscopy (PALM) in organic solvents, herein we present the imaging of one-dimensional supramolecular polymers in their native environment by interface Point Accumulation for Imaging in Nanoscale Topography (iPAINT). Super-resolution microscopy was recently proposed as an effective tool to unveil one-dimensional nanoscale structures in aqueous media upon chemical functionalization with suitable fluorescent probes. Despite the rapid development of complex functional supramolecular systems, visualization of these architectures under native conditions at high resolution has remained a challenging endeavor.
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