This review encompasses properties and applications of polycrystalline or amorphous, Transparent Conducting Oxides (TCO) semiconductors. Coexistence of electrical conductivity and optical transparency in TCO depends on the nature, number and atomic arrangements of metal cations in oxides, on the resident morphology and presence of intrinsic or introduced defects. Therefore, TCO semiconductors that are impurity-doped as well as the ternary compounds and multi-component oxides consisting of combinations are discussed. Expanding use of TCO is endangered by scarcity, cost of In, fragility of glass, limited transparency to visible light, instability above >200 °C, non-flexible for application of flexible solar cell; thus driving search for alternatives such as graphene or CNT, that are more stable under acidic, alkaline, oxidizing, reducing and elevated temperature. There are reasons to conclude that there is need to develop large area deposition techniques to produce TCO films with high deposition rate. TCOs are mostly n-type semiconductors, but p-type are also being researched
A novel report on microwave assisted synthesis of bright carbon dots (C-dots) using gum arabic (GA) and its use as molecular vehicle to ferry ciprofloxacin hydrochloride, a broad spectrum antibiotic, is reported in the present work. Density gradient centrifugation (DGC) was used to separate different types of C-dots. After careful analysis of the fractions obtained after centrifugation, ciprofloxacin was attached to synthesize ciprofloxacin conjugated with C-dots (Cipro@C-dots conjugate). Release of ciprofloxacin was found to be extremely regulated under physiological conditions. Cipro@C-dots were found to be biocompatible on Vero cells as compared to free ciprofloxacin (1.2 mM) even at very high concentrations. Bare C-dots (∼13 mg mL−1) were used for microbial imaging of the simplest eukaryotic model—Saccharomyces cerevisiae (yeast). Bright green fluorescent was obtained when live imaging was performed to view yeast cells under fluorescent microscope suggesting C-dots incorporation inside the cells. Cipro@C-dots conjugate also showed enhanced antimicrobial activity against both model gram positive and gram negative microorganisms. Thus, the Cipro@C-dots conjugate paves not only a way for bioimaging but also an efficient new nanocarrier for controlled drug release with high antimicrobial activity, thereby serving potential tool for theranostics.
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