Abstract
Biological applications of core/shell near-infrared quantum dots (QDs) have attracted broad interest due to their unique optical and chemical properties. Additionally, the use of multifunctional nanomaterials with near-infrared QDs and plasmonic functional nanoparticles are promising for applications in electronics, bioimaging, energy, and environmental-related studies. In this work, we experimentally demonstrate how to construct a multifunctional nanoparticle comprised of CdSe/ZnS QDs and gold nanorods (GNRs) where the GNRs were applied to enhance the photoluminescence (PL) of the CdSe/ZnS QDs. In particular, we have obtained the scattering PL spectrum of a single CdSe/ZnS QD and GNR@CdSe/ZnS nanoparticle and comparison results show that the CdSe/ZnS QDs have an apparent PL enhancement of four-times after binding with GNRs. In addition, in vitro experimental results show that the biostability of the GNR@CdSe/ZnS nanoparticles can be improved by using folic acid. A bioimaging study has also been performed where GNR@CdSe/ZnS nanoparticles were used as an optical process for MCF-7 breast cancer cells.
Highlights
In the past decades, quantum dots (QDs) have proven to be increasingly useful for their unique features [1,2,3,4,5]
The PL characteristics are, better than in materials which have deep traps in the bulk semiconductor material. This finding suggests that when metal or chemical materials are doped with QDs, the number of surface trap states is affected by the surface passivation and by the degree of quantum confinement
In CdSe/ZnS QDs with higher defect densities, binding with gold nanorods (GNRs) having very heterogeneous energetic metal-derived states showed that their PL could be characterized by band edge dispersion in different sizes of CdSe/ZnS QDs and GNRs and that the PL contribution varied in these new states
Summary
Quantum dots (QDs) have proven to be increasingly useful for their unique features [1,2,3,4,5]. The Au peak comes from the GNRs. The results agree well with the synthesis chemical ratio, as explained, suggesting that GNR@CdSe/ZnS nanoparticles were successfully synthesized by the described synthetic route. The size and morphology of the GNRs and GNR@CdSe/ZnS was characterized using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and the results are shown in Figure 3a and 3b.
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