Nanoparticles Produced via Laser Ablation of Porous Silicon and Silicon Nanowires for Optical Bioimaging.

Stanislav V Zabotnov,Ekaterina A Sergeeva,Leonid A Golovan,Anastasiia V Skobelkina,Aleksandr V Khilov,Fedor V Kashaev,Pavel K Kashkarov,Dmitrii V Shuleiko,Daria A Kurakina,Mikhail Yu Kirillin,Pavel D Agrba,Tatyana P Kaminskaya,Denis E Presnov

doi:10.3390/s20174874

Abstract

Modern trends in optical bioimaging require novel nanoproducts combining high image contrast with efficient treatment capabilities. Silicon nanoparticles are a wide class of nanoobjects with tunable optical properties, which has potential as contrasting agents for fluorescence imaging and optical coherence tomography. In this paper we report on developing a novel technique for fabricating silicon nanoparticles by means of picosecond laser ablation of porous silicon films and silicon nanowire arrays in water and ethanol. Structural and optical properties of these particles were studied using scanning electron and atomic force microscopy, Raman scattering, spectrophotometry, fluorescence, and optical coherence tomography measurements. The essential features of the fabricated silicon nanoparticles are sizes smaller than 100 nm and crystalline phase presence. Effective fluorescence and light scattering of the laser-ablated silicon nanoparticles in the visible and near infrared ranges opens new prospects of their employment as contrasting agents in biophotonics, which was confirmed by pilot experiments on optical imaging.

Highlights

Modern trends in medicine imply development of novel treatment protocols based on theranostics, preferably, including non-invasive diagnostics modalities
The main aim of this work is a comprehensive study of structural, absorption, scattering, and fluorescence properties of silicon nanoparticles (SiNPs) fabricated via Pulsed laser ablation in liquids (PLAL) of both target types: PSi films and silicon nanowire (SiNW) arrays with different doping levels which defines the morphology of the targets [18,33,34]
Similar broad and red-shifted fluorescence spectra were previously produced by laser ablation of SiNW arrays in water and ethanol demonstrate smaller difference with found formed by laser ablation of example, microporous silicon in ethanol features peak couldafter be thosefor of SiNPs the initial arrays

Summary

Introduction

Modern trends in medicine imply development of novel treatment protocols based on theranostics, preferably, including non-invasive diagnostics modalities. Nanoparticles exhibit efficient penetration into biotissues, while conjugating them with specific antibodies allow for producing targeted nanoconstructs that demonstrate high contrast of accumulation in specific tissues, e.g., tumors. High contrast in local optical properties ensured by nanoparticles accumulation allows to non-invasively control their biodistribution by means of optical imaging techniques. Light activation of the nanoconstructs accumulated in tumors provides an effective non-invasive treatment modality with minimal impact to surrounding normal tissues [2,4]. Silicon nanoproducts are a potential class of theranostics agents due to their biocompatibility, biodegradability, and specific optical properties [5,6], techniques for controlling physical and optical properties of silicon nanoparticles (SiNPs) require further improvement

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