Rampazzo Enrico, Prodi Luca, Petrizza Luca, Zaccheroni Nelsi
Dipartimento di Chimica, G. Ciamician, Via Selmi 2, 40126, Bologna, Italy.
Top Curr Chem. 2016;370:1-28. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-22942-3_1.
The field of nanoparticles has successfully merged with imaging to optimize contrast agents for many detection techniques. This combination has yielded highly positive results, especially in optical and magnetic imaging, leading to diagnostic methods that are now close to clinical use. Biological sciences have been taking advantage of luminescent labels for many years and the development of luminescent nanoprobes has helped definitively in making the crucial step forward in in vivo applications. To this end, suitable probes should present excitation and emission within the NIR region where tissues have minimal absorbance. Among several nanomaterials engineered with this aim, including noble metal, lanthanide, and carbon nanoparticles and quantum dots, we have focused our attention here on luminescent silica nanoparticles. Many interesting results have already been obtained with nanoparticles containing only one kind of photophysically active moiety. However, the presence of different emitting species in a single nanoparticle can lead to diverse properties including cooperative behaviours. We present here the state of the art in the field of silica luminescent nanoparticles exploiting collective processes to obtain ultra-bright units suitable as contrast agents in optical imaging and optical sensing and for other high sensitivity applications.
纳米颗粒领域已成功与成像技术相结合，为多种检测技术优化造影剂。这种结合产生了非常积极的成果，尤其是在光学成像和磁成像方面，催生了现已接近临床应用的诊断方法。生物科学利用发光标记已有多年，发光纳米探针的发展确实有助于在体内应用方面迈出关键的一步。为此，合适的探针应在近红外区域呈现激发和发射，该区域组织的吸光度最小。在为实现这一目标而设计的几种纳米材料中，包括贵金属、镧系元素、碳纳米颗粒和量子点，我们在此将注意力集中在发光二氧化硅纳米颗粒上。仅含一种光物理活性部分的纳米颗粒已经取得了许多有趣的成果。然而，单个纳米颗粒中存在不同的发光物种可能导致包括协同行为在内的多种特性。我们在此展示了二氧化硅发光纳米颗粒领域的最新进展，利用集体过程来获得超亮单元，这些单元适合用作光学成像和光学传感中的造影剂以及用于其他高灵敏度应用。
