Au nanoparticles (NPs) possess unique physicochemical and optical properties, showing great potential in biomedical applications. Diagnostic spectroscopy utilizing varied Au NPs has become a precision tool of in vitro and in vivo diagnostic for cancer and other specific diseases. In this review, we tried to comprehensively introduce the remarkable optical properties of Au NPs, including localized surfaces plasmon resonance (LSPR), surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), and metal-enhanced fluorescence (MEF). Then, we highlighted the excellent works using Au NPs for optical diagnostic applications. Ultimately, the challenges and future perspective of using Au NPs for optical diagnostic were discussed.
Gold nanocrystals have attracted considerable attention due to their excellent physical and chemical properties and their extensive applications in plasmonics, spectroscopy, biological detection, and nanoelectronics. Gold nanoparticles are able to be readily modified and arranged with DNA materials and protein molecules, as well as viruses. Particularly DNA materials with the advantages endowed by programmability, stability, specificity, and the capability to adapt to functionalization, have become the most promising candidates that are widely utilized for building plenty of discrete gold nanoarchitectures. This review highlights recent advances on the DNA-based assembly of gold nanostructures and especially emphasizes their resulted superior optical properties and principles, including plasmonic extinction, plasmonic chirality, surface enhanced fluorescence (SEF), and surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS).
Cathode interlayers (CILs) with low-cost, low-toxicity, and excellent cathode modification ability are necessary for the large-scale industrialization of polymer solar cells (PSCs). In this contribution, we demonstrated one-pot synthesized carbon quantum dots (C-dots) with high production to serve as efficient CIL for inverted PSCs. The C-dots were synthesized by a facile, economical microwave pyrolysis in a household microwave oven within 7 min. Ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS) studies showed that the C-dots possessed the ability to form a dipole at the interface, resulting in the decrease of the work function (WF) of cathode. External quantum efficiency (EQE) measurements and 2D excitation-emission topographical maps revealed that the C-dots down-shifted the high energy near-ultraviolet light to low energy visible light to generate more photocurrent. Remarkably improvement of power conversion efficiency (PCE) was attained by incorporation of C-dots as CIL. The PCE was boosted up from 4.14% to 8.13% with C-dots as CIL, which is one of the best efficiency for i-PSCs used carbon based materials as interlayers. These results demonstrated that C-dots can be a potential candidate for future low cost and large area PSCs producing.
We demonstrate that the influence of plasmonic effects based on silver nanowires (Ag NWs) on the characteristics of polymer solar cells (PSCs). The solution-processed Ag NWs are situated at the interface of anode buffer layer and active layer, which could enhance the performance especially the photocurrent of PSCs by scattering, localized surface plasmon resonance, and surface plasmon polaritons. Plasmonic effects are confirmed by the enhancement of extinction spectra, external quantum efficiency, and steady state photoluminescence. Consequently, the short-circuit current density (Jsc) and power conversion efficiency enhance about 24% and 18%, respectively, under AM1.5 illumination when Ag NWs plasmonic nanostructure incorporated into PSCs.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.