ZnO nanocomposites modified by hydrophobic and hydrophilic silanes with dramatically enhanced tunable fluorescence and aqueous ultrastability toward biological imaging applications

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Abstract

Multicolor ZnO quantum dots (QDs) were synthesized and further modified with hydrophobic hexadecyltrimethoxysilane (HDS) and then hydrophilic aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APS) bilayers, resulting in amine-functionalized ZnO@HDS@APS nanocomposites with tunable fluorescence from blue to green yellow. Systematic investigations verify that the resulting ZnO@HDS@APS could display extremely high stability in aqueous media and unexpectedly, dramatically-enhanced fluorescence intensities, which are about 10-fold higher than those of bare ZnO QDs. The feasibility of the as-prepared ZnO nanocomposites for blood, cell, and tissue imaging was preliminarily demonstrated, promising the wide bio-applications for cell or tissue imaging, proteome analysis, drug delivery, and molecular labeling.

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Li, S., Sun, Z., Li, R., Dong, M., Zhang, L., Qi, W., … Wang, H. (2014). ZnO nanocomposites modified by hydrophobic and hydrophilic silanes with dramatically enhanced tunable fluorescence and aqueous ultrastability toward biological imaging applications. Scientific Reports, 5. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep08475

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