Dai's lab pioneered second-near-infrared-window (NIR-II/SWIR) fluorescent nanomaterial probes -- including carbon nanotube and rare-earth-based emitters -- that dramatically reduce tissue scattering and autofluorescence, enabling deep-tissue in vivo optical imaging at spatial resolution unattainable with visible-light fluorophores.

Heinze designs earth-abundant luminescent metal complexes -- the 'molecular ruby' (Cr(III)) family and its Mo(III) NIR-II-emitting analogues -- and studies their excited-state dynamics with time-resolved luminescence, ultrafast spectroscopy and EPR, in collaboration with spin-spectroscopy groups including van Slageren at Stuttgart. Applications targeted include optical sensing (oxygen, pressure, temperature), NIR-II imaging in the tissue-transparency window, and photocatalysis. Relative to the established NV-ensemble quantum-sensing playbook (DEER, nanoscale NMR, T1 relaxometry at pT/sqrt(Hz) ensemble sensitivity), this is a dye/label-based sensing inclusion rather than a spin-defect one: the emphasis is on engineering the emitter's photophysics so that lifetime and intensity report on the local environment, which is directly comparable to nanodiamond thermometry/relaxometry but at the molecular scale.