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A SERS active gold nanostar layer on the surface of ITO glass slip has been prepared by a low-cost electrostatically assisted APTES-functionalized surface-assembly method for SERS analysis. The two-dimensional morphology of the SERS substrate was examined by scanning electron microscopy. Comparative analysis revealed that the optical characteristics and SERS efficiency of these substrates varied as a function of nanostar morphology. It was found that the substrate assembled with the longest branches of nanostars generated the best SERS efficiency, whether the excitation source is 785 or 633 nm. The potential use of these substrates in detection applications was also investigated by using Nile blue A and Rhodamine 6G. The detection limits are 5 × 10(-11) M and 1 × 10(-9) M, respectively, when using the 785 nm excitation source. Apart from this high enhancement effect, the substrate here also shows extremely good reproducibility at the same time. All of these indicate that gold nanostars are a very good structure for SERS substrate assembly.

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A method was developed to continuously adjust the position of the stop band of inverse opal by controlling the refractive index. The inverse opal films were fabricated using a coassembly of monodispersed polystyrene spheres and nanoparticles of silica and titania from aqueous suspensions followed by a calcination treatment. Varying the ratio of silica and titania in the suspensions gave the ability to finely adjust the refractive indices, which as a result changed the stop band.

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. Inhibition of Wnt/␤-catenin signaling promotes epithelial differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells and repairs bleomycininduced lung injury.

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