In collaboration with the Photochemical Nanosciences Laboratory of the University of Bologna lead by Prof. Luca Prodi we are investigating fluorescent dye-doped silica nanoparticles applied in Nanomedicine as in vitro and in vivo probes.
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Researcher at UniBO have recently developed methods to use organosilicate chemistry to synthesize particles with functional architectures for applications in nanobiotechnology and nanophotonics. Using sol-gel processes, they can grow particles of tens of nm embedding different fluorophores and organic molecules with specific functionalities. The inclusion of organic dyes into the silica matrix gives to this nanoparticles a brightness comparable to that of quantum dots and several order of magnitude higher than that of free dyes in solution. Fluorescence and photo stability enhancements have been demonstrated in a number of dyes throughout the visible spectrum and current research is devoted to design new particles for applications in biology, photonics, chemical sensing and energy conversion. One of the goals of our work in silica nanoparticles is the integration of multiple functionalities to create so-called lab-on-a-particle architectures, which would be capable of specific, localized multi-parameter analyses which are not possible using current technologies.