Silafluorene as a promising core for cell-permeant, highly bright and two-photon excitable fluorescent probes for live-cell imaging

In this study, we report the synthesis, linear and non-linear photophysical studies and live-cell imaging of two two-photon activatable probes based on a silafluorene core: SiFluo-V and SiFluo-L. Thanks to their quadrupolar (A-pi-D-pi-A) design, these probes exhibit respectively good to impressive two-photon cross-sections (from 210 GM to 2150 GM). TD-DFT calculations support the experimental evidence that SiFluo-L displays far better two-photon absorption properties than SiFluo-V. Moreover, SiFluo-L possesses all requirements for bioimaging as it is water soluble, cell-permeant and presents a low cytotoxicity (IC80 >= 10 mu M). It labels mitochondria in live-cell imaging at low laser power with high brightness, contrast and photostability. This study demonstrates that silafluorene is a promising core to develop new two-photon fluorophores for live-cell imaging.