Erogbogbo Folarin, Yong Ken-Tye, Roy Indrajit, Xu Gaixia, Prasad Paras N, Swihart Mark T
Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University at Buffalo (SUNY), Buffalo, New York 14260-4200, USA.
ACS Nano. 2008 May;2(5):873-8. doi: 10.1021/nn700319z.
Luminescent silicon quantum dots (Si QDs) have great potential for use in biological imaging and diagnostic applications. To exploit this potential, they must remain luminescent and stably dispersed in water and biological fluids over a wide range of pH and salt concentration. There have been many challenges in creating such stable water-dispersible Si QDs, including instability of photoluminescence due their fast oxidation in aqueous environments and the difficulty of attaching hydrophilic molecules to Si QD surfaces. In this paper, we report the preparation of highly stable aqueous suspensions of Si QDs using phospholipid micelles, in which the optical properties of Si nanocrystals are retained. These luminescent micelle-encapsulated Si QDs were used as luminescent labels for pancreatic cancer cells. This paves the way for silicon quantum dots to be a valuable optical probe in biomedical diagnostics.
发光硅量子点（Si QDs）在生物成像和诊断应用方面具有巨大潜力。为了发挥这一潜力，它们必须在广泛的pH值和盐浓度范围内保持发光并稳定地分散在水和生物流体中。制备这种稳定的水分散性Si QDs存在许多挑战，包括由于其在水性环境中的快速氧化导致的光致发光不稳定性以及将亲水性分子连接到Si QD表面的困难。在本文中，我们报道了使用磷脂胶束制备高度稳定的Si QDs水性悬浮液，其中Si纳米晶体的光学性质得以保留。这些发光的胶束包裹的Si QDs被用作胰腺癌细胞的发光标记物。这为硅量子点成为生物医学诊断中有价值的光学探针铺平了道路。
