Bright and monodispersed phosphorescent particles and their applications for biological assays

Halogen-containing polymers and copolymers have been discovered to provide excellent encapsulation matrixes for making bright and monodispersed phosphorescent nanoparticles. The phosphorescent nanoparticles exhibit strong phosphorescence with long lifetime and large Stoke shift under ambient conditions. The cross-linked phosphorescent particles using halogen-containing copolymers have been found to be very stable and easily resuspendable in aqueous media. The surface functional groups have been demonstrated to allow covalent tagging of biological recognition molecules such as antibodies to make particle-antibody conjugates. The conjugates can be used to provide very sensitive detection of analytes through time-resolved phosphorescence measurements.