Stimuli‐Responsive Hybridized Nanostructures

Abstract

Through innovative nanosynthesis techniques and advanced surface‐passivation methods, diversified luminescent nanocrystals, like quantum dots, metal nanoclusters, carbon dots, and upconversion nanoparticles, are produced successfully to exhibit greatly improved performance in various applications, due to their color tunability and resistance to photobleaching. Their further hybridization with stimuli‐responsive polymers endows the resultant nanohybrids with unique smart functions, which can reversibly respond to external stimuli or environmental changes via alternation in luminescence. Due to their multifunctional properties, these responsive luminescent nanohybrids are attracting more and more interest in foundation research and promising applications recently. Here, important developments and achievements made in this emerging field are summarized to highlight the integration concepts and fabrication methods for luminescent nanohybrids, and their special responsive functions to temperature, pH, fields, and analytes. At the same time, their smart applications are also overviewed for demonstrating novel actions of responsive nanohybrids via various intelligent operations. The aim is to understand and accelerate more advanced developments in creating varied and intelligent nanosystems, and provide perspectives to promote a further revolution of smart materials and technology.

Towards safe and sustainable innovation in nanotechnology: State-of-play for smart nanomaterials

“…It takes into account not only risk considerations, intentionality of manufacture and solubility of the material but it also defines a nanomaterial not only by the size of the external dimensions of a particle but also by the size of the material internal structure. Thus it may cover to a certain extent stimuli-responsive nanostructured materials designed to be used in cosmetic products ( Guan et al, 2019 ). Before being placed on the European Union's market a cosmetic product has to be notified to the European Commission.…”

Plasmonically Modulated Gold Nanostructures for Photothermal Ablation of Bacteria

“…[269] To precisely monitor temperature at micro/nanoscale, thermal-responsive species are combined with nanostructured materials to develop different types of nanothermometers. [270] Typically, luminescent thermometers are designed and made based on the temperature-dependent properties, which include the emission intensity and/or lifetime of organic dyes, quantum dots and Ln 3+ ions, [271,272] the change of the aggregated states of hydrogels containing thermo-sensitive polymer, [273,274] and the color change via the transitions of crystal phase of liquid crystals. [275,276] In addition, other optical methods such as thermal reflection, absorption, Rayleigh scattering, Raman scattering and magnetic resonance imaging have also been developed for use in thermometry.…”

Carbon Dots: An Emerging Smart Material for Analytical Applications

“…The synthesis and applications of these smart material or stimulus-responsive materials have been among the principal focus of research in recent times. Conventionally, the smart materials that belong to metal alloys, semiconducting materials, and inorganic compounds are widely used in smart technology such as strain sensors, actuators, and robots [ 7 ]. Such materials can change the outlook of modern science and technology and engineering at large.…”