Encapsuled luminescent water soluble ZnS semiconductor Nanocrystals within Sol-gel silica For bioanalysis Applications

摘要

Luminescent semiconductor nanocrystals have unique photophysical properties and in respect with these properties, they have a lot of applications in bioanalysis especially in corporation with biomolecules. One of the obstacles that exist in the use of semiconductor nanocrystals as probes for bioanalysis is that after adding the biomolecules like enzymes, they cannot be reused. The sol-gel technique can be used for immobilizing both semiconductor nanocrystal and biomolecule in a biocompatible transparent silica gel. In this work, ZnS semiconductor nanocrystals were synthesized in cyclohexan/triton x-100/n-hexanol/water reverse microemulsion system. Microemulsion method is a suitable technique for controlling size and uniformity of nanoparticles. A lot of parameters can modulate characteristics of resultant nanoparticles in microemulsion method including reactant concentrations, [water]/[surfactant], temperature of reaction. The Schematic of ZnS nanocrystal synthesis in microemmulsion system is shown in figure 1.