Rational design of near-infrared carbon dots as polarity-sensitive fluorescent probes for imaging of lipid droplets

), in which the emission reached to the NIR region near 800 nm with the maximum emission wavelength located around 700 nm. This nanoprobe can specifically colocalize with LDs with a high correlation coefficient of 0.96 and effectively image the polarity changes in LDs and living cells. This work presents effective strategies and foundations for the construction of NIR CDs, helps in the design of polarity selective probes, and has implications for accelerating the development of polarity-related processes for disease diagnosis.