A General and Facile Strategy to Fabricate Multifunctional Nanoprobes for Simultaneous 19F Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Optical/Thermal Imaging, and Photothermal Therapy

19F magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), due to its high sensitivity and negligible background, is anticipated to be a powerful noninvasive, sensitive, and accurate molecular imaging technique. However, the major challenge of 19F MRI is to increase the number of 19F atoms while maintaining the solubility and molecular mobility of the probe. Here, we successfully developed a facile and general strategy to synthesize the multifunctional 19F MRI nanoprobes by encapsulating the hydrophobic inorganic nanoparticles (NPs) into a hybrid polymer micelle consisting of hydrolysates of 1H,1H,2H,2H-perfluorodecyltriethoxysilane (PDTES) and oleylamine-functionalized poly(succinimide) (PSIOAm). Due to their good water dispersibility, excellent molecular mobility resulting from the ultrathin coating, and high 19F atom numbers, these nanoprobes generate a separate sharp singlet of 19F nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) signal (at −82.8 ppm) with half peak width of ∼28 Hz, which is highly applicable for 19F MRI. Significantly, ...