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Durch stetige Entwicklung der Mikroskopiemethoden in den letzten Jahrzehnten ist es nun möglich Strukturen und Abläufe in biologischen Systemen detaillierter darzustellen als mit der von Abbe entdeckten maximalen Auflösungsgrenze. Oft werden dabei Fluoreszenzmarker benutzt, welche die unsichtbare Welt der Mikrobiologie und deren biochemische Prozesse illuminieren. Diese werden entweder durch Expression, wie z.B. das grün fluoreszierende Protein (GFP), in das zu untersuchende Objekt eingebracht oder durch klassische Markierungsmethoden mithilfe von fluoreszierenden Immunkonjugaten installiert. Jedoch gewinnt eine alternative Strategie, die von der interdisziplinären Zusammenarbeit zwischen Chemikern, Physikern und Biologen profitiert, immer mehr an Bedeutung – die bioorthogonale Click-Chemie. Sie ermöglicht eine effiziente Fluoreszenzmarkierung der biologischen Strukturen unter minimalem Eingriff in die Abläufe der Zelle. Dazu müssen allerdings sowohl Farbstoffe als auch die biologisch aktiven Substanzen chemisch modifiziert werden, da nur dadurch die Bioorthogonalität gewährleistet werden kann.
Mittlerweile existiert eine breite Palette an fluoreszierenden Farbstoffen, die das komplette sichtbare Spektrum abdecken und sich für diverse Mikroskopiemethoden eignen. Allerdings gibt es zwei Farbstoffklassen, die sich aus der gesamten Fülle abheben und sich für hochauflösende bildgebende Experimente auf Einzelmolekülebene eignen. Zum einen ist es die Farbstofffamilie der Cyanine und insbesondere der wasserlöslichen Pentamethincyanine, die reversibel und kontrolliert zum Photoschalten animiert werden können und in der stochastisch optischen Rekonstruktionsmikroskopie Anwendung finden. Zum anderen ist es die Gruppe, der Rhodamine und Fluoresceine, die zu Xanthenfarbstoffen gehören und sich durch gute photophysikalische Eigenschaften auszeichnen.
Trotz der Beliebtheit stellt ihre Darstellung immer noch eine Herausforderung dar und limitiert deren Einsatz. Deshalb war es notwendig im Rahmen der vorliegenden Arbeit Möglichkeiten zur Syntheseoptimierung beider Farbstoffklassen zu finden, damit diese im Folgenden weiterentwickelt und an die biologische Fragestellung angepasst werden können. Die Arbeit unterteilt sich deshalb in Relation an die oben genannten Farbstoffklassen in zwei Bereiche. Im ersten Teil wurden Projekte basierend auf den wasserlöslichen Pentamethincyaninen behandelt. Im zweiten Teil beschäftigte sich die Arbeit mit Projekten, die auf Xanthen-Farbstoffen aufbauen.
Squaraine dyes have attracted more attention in the past decade due to their strong and narrow absorption and fluorescence along with the easily functionalized molecular structure. One successful approach of core functionalization is to replace one oxygen of the squaric carbonyl group with a dicyanomethylene group, which shifts the absorption and emission into the near infrared (NIR) region and at the same time leads to a rigid, planar structure with C2v symmetry. However, such squaraines tend to aggregate cofacially in solution due to dispersion forces and dipole-dipole interactions, usually leading to H-type exciton coupling with undesired blue-shifted spectrum and quenched fluorescence. Therefore, the goal of my research was the design of dicyanomethylene-substituted squaraine dyes that self-assemble into extended aggregates in solution with J-type coupling, in order to retain or even enhance their outstanding optical properties. Toward this goal, bis(squaraine) dyes were envisioned with two squaraine units covalently linked to trigger a slip-stacked packing motif within the aggregates to enable J-type coupling.
In my first project, bis(squaraine) dye BisSQ1 was synthesized, in which two dicyanomethylene squaraine chromophores are covalently linked. Concentration and temperature-dependent UV/Vis/NIR spectroscopy experiments reveal that BisSQ1 undergoes cooperative self-assembly resulting in J-type aggregates in a solvent mixture of toluene/1,1,2,2-tetrachloroethane (TCE) (98:2, v/v). The J type exciton coupling is evident from the significantly red shifted absorption maximum at 886 nm and the fluorescence peak at 904 nm. In conclusion, this was a first example to direct squaraine dye aggregation in solution to the more desired slip-stacked packing leading to J-type exciton coupling by simply connecting two dyes in a head-to-tail bis chromophore structure.
Connecting two squaraine dyes with an additional phenylene spacer (BisSQ2) leads to two different polymorphs with very distinct absorption spectra upon cooling down a solution of BisSQ2 in a solvent mixture of toluene/TCE (98:2, v/v) with different rates. Accordingly, rapid cooling resulted in rigid helical nanorods with an absorption spectrum showing a panchromatic feature, while slow cooling led to a sheet-like structure with a significant bathochromic shift in the absorption spectrum.
It was discovered that the conventional molecular exciton model failed to explain the panchromatic absorption features of the nanorods for the given packing arrangement, therefore more profound theoretical investigations based on the Essential States Model (ESM) were applied to unveil the importance of intermolecular charge transfer (ICT) to adequately describe the panchromatic absorption spectrum. Moreover, the red-shift observed in the spectrum for the sheet-like structure can be assigned to the interplay of Coulomb coupling and ICT-mediated coupling.
Furthermore, the same bis-chromophore strategy was adopted for constructing an NIR-II emitter with a bathochromically-shifted spectrum. In chloroform, BisSQ3 exhibits an absorption maximum at 961 nm with a significant bathochromic shift (1020 cm−1) compared to the reference mono-squaraine SQ, indicating intramolecular J-type coupling via head-to-tail arrangement of two squaraine dyes. Moreover, BisSQ3 shows a fluorescence peak at 971 nm with a decent quantum yield of 0.33%. In less polar toluene, BisSQ3 self-assembles into nanofibers with additional intermolecular J-type coupling, causing a pronounced bathochromic shift with absorption maximum at 1095 nm and a fluorescence peak at 1116 nm. Thus, connecting two quinoline-based squaraines in a head-to-tail fashion leads to not only intra-, but also intermolecular J-type exciton coupling, which serves as a promising strategy to shift the absorption and emission of organic fluorophores into the NIR-II window while retaining decent quantum yields.
In conclusion, my research illustrates based on squaraine dyes how a simple modification of the molecular structure can significantly affect the aggregation behavior and further alter the optical properties of dye aggregates. Elongated supramolecular structures based on dicyanomethylene substituted squaraine dyes were successfully established by covalently linking two squaraine units to form a bis-chromophore structure. Then, a simple but efficient general approach was established to direct squaraine dye aggregation in solution to the more desired slip-stacked packing leading to J-type exciton coupling by directly connecting two squaraine dyes in a head-to-tail fashion without spacer units. Moreover, the additional spacer between the squaraine dyes in BisSQ2 allowed different molecular conformations, which leads to two different morphologies depending on the cooling rates for a hot solution. Hence, this is a promising strategy to realize supramolecular polymorphism.
In general, it is expected that the concept of constructing J-aggregates by the bis-chromophore approach can be extended to entirely different classes of dyes since J-aggregates possess a variety of features such as spectral shifts into the NIR window, fluorescence enhancement, and light harvesting, which are commonly observed and utilized for numerous fundamental studies and applications. Moreover, the insights on short-range charge transfer coupling for squaraine dyes is considered of relevance for all materials based on alternating donor-acceptor π-systems. The panchromatic spectral feature is in particular crucial for acceptor-donor-acceptor (ADA) dyes, which are currently considered as very promising materials for the development of bulk heterojunction solar cells.