1 Electronic Supplementary Information (ESI) Constructing NIR silica-cyanine hybrid nanocomposite for bioimaging in vivo: a breakthrough in photo-stability and bright fluorescence with large Stokes shift Xumeng Wu, a‡ Shu Chang, b‡ Xuanrong Sun, c‡ Zhiqian Guo, a Yongsheng Li, b * Jianbin Tang, c * Youqing Shen, c Jianlin Shi, b He Tian a and Weihong Zhu a * a Shanghai Key Laboratory of Functional Materials Chemistry, Key Laboratory for Advanced Materials and Institute of Fine Chemicals, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, China. E-mail: whzhu@ecust.edu.cn b Key Laboratory for Ultrafine Materials of Ministry of Education, School of Materials Science and Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, China. E-mail: ysli@ecust.edu.cn. c Key Laboratory of Biomass Chemical Engineering of Ministry of Education, Center for Bionanoengineering, and Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, 310027, China. E-mail: jianbin@zju.edu.cn ‡ These authors contributed equally to this work. Electronic Supplementary Material (ESI) for Chemical Science This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2013