A facile and general approach for the synthesis of fluorescent silica nanoparticles doped with inert dyes

Abstract

A general and facile approach was developed for the synthesis of almost monodisperse fluorescent silica nanoparticles (NPs) doped with inert dyes, which are organic fluorophores that are strongly fluorescent but are hydrophobic or lack a covalent binding group. The prepared NPs were mesoporous and the dye molecules were encapsulated in the pores via hydrophobic interaction with the CTAB template. The NPs were stable and highly fluorescent in aqueous solution, and have potential applications in bioanalysis and fluorescence encoding.

Energy transfer from an individual silica nanoparticle to graphene quantum dots and resulting enhancement of photodetector responsivity

“…Silica is a hydrophilic material that is photophysically inert, and is not involved in energy- and electron-transfer processes because it is transparent to visible light26. However, the miniaturization of silica down to nanoscale introduces intrinsic peculiar properties, such as enhanced absorption and PL in broad wavelength range of NIR, visible, and UV, potentially promising for the use of silica nanoparticles (SNPs) in down-converter displays or medical nanoprobes without the need of doping with bright extrinsic fluorophores26272829. SNPs also have advantages such as easy surface modification via physical adsorption and covalent conjugation by chemical processes26282930, which could change their chemical and physical properties dramatically.…”

“…S1). This FRET system has several novel properties; (1) Photo-excited electron-hole pairs occupy mostly the surface states of SNPs26272829, thereby making it easy for the energy to be transferred to adjacent GQDs, as shown in Fig. 1b.…”

“…(3) SNPs and GQDs have good chemistry due to their high-absorptive and strong-emissive properties, thereby possibly enhancing the efficiency of the optoelectronic devices based on this FRET system. (4) Both materials can be well covalently-functionalized24252627282930.…”

Fluorescent Silica Nanoparticles for Medical Imaging

“…81 First an amine containing silane compound is reacted with an amine reactive organic dye (e.g. FITC), creating a thiourea linkage.…”

Graphene-templated approach to ultrathin silica nanosheets

“…nanowires [9], nanotubes [10,11] and nanorods [12]) as well as 3D silica nanostructures (e.g. nanoparticles [13,14] and nanocubes [15]) have been widely investigated. Recently, graphene-supported large area silica nanosheets have been reported by our group [16].…”