Rather than using graphene oxide, which is limited by a high defect concentration and cost due to oxidation and reduction, we adopted cost-effective, 3.56 nm thick graphene platelets (GnPs) of high structural integrity to melt compound with an elastomer-ethylene-propylene-diene monomer rubber (EPDM)-using an industrial facility. An elastomer is an amorphous, chemically crosslinked polymer gener...

Objective(s): Taking advantage of high atomic number of gold nanoparticles (GNPs) in radiation dose absorbing, many in vitro and in vivo studies have been carried out on using them as radio-sensitizer. In spite of noticeable dose enhancement by GNPs at keV energies, using this energy range for radiotherapy of deep-seated tumors is outdated. The aim of the present work was to examine the effect ...

background: gold nanoparticles (gnps) are used in imaging and molecular diagnostic applications. as the development of a novel approach in the green synthesis of metal nanoparticles is of great importance and a necessity, a simple and safe method for the synthesis of gnps using plant extracts of zataria multiflora leaves was applied in this study and the results on gnps’ anticancer activity aga...

Photoanodes comprising Au nanoparticles (GNPs) and thin TiO2 layers with a stacked structure were fabricated by repeating the application of TiO2 paste and GNP solutions on conductive glass to vary the distribution of GNPs in the TiO2 layer. The plasmon-enhanced characteristics of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) with such photoanodes were investigated. Both the absorption of the TiO2 layer a...

Gold nanoparticles (GNPs) can effectively differentiate the unfolded and folded aptamer, and quench the fluorescence of terbium ternary complexes (Tb-complexes), thus the authors herein report a sensitive strategy for protein detection, using label-free aptamer, Tb-complexes and GNPs. In the presence of thrombin, the aptamer is inclined to form G-quartet, and the folded aptamer cannot adsorb on...

Introduction: To increase therapeutic ratio, using radio-sensitizers is recommended and nowadays some types of them are utilized clinically. In recent years, Gold nanoparticles (GNPs) were considered as radio-sensitizers in many studies due to high atomic number. Although theoretical works showed that GNPs have an insignificant effect at MV energies, some In-vitro and In-vivo s...

In recent years, numerous platforms have been developed for the detection of DNA sequences due to their great importance in biological analysis and application in biomedical fields. In recent two decades, gold nanoparticles (GNPs) have shown great application value in bioanalytical fields owing to their facile preparation methods and excellent optical properties. These properties are utilized t...

HIV is a retrovirus which belongs to the family of lentiviruses. From the beginning of the HIV epidemic almost 75 million people have been infected and about 36 million people have died of HIV. Globally, 35.3 million people were living with HIV at the end of 2012. Gold nanoparticles (A. indica-GNPs) were synthesized from leaf extract of Azadirachta indica by microwave assistance. Surface chemis...

Photomechanical nanocomposites embedded with light-absorbing nanoparticles show promising applications in photoresponsive actuations. Near infrared (nIR)-responsive nanocomposites based photomechanical soft actuators can offer lightweight functional and underexploited entry into soft robotics, active optics, drug delivery, etc. A novel graphene-based photomechanical soft actuators, constituted ...

iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my advisor Dr. Lili He for her full support and encouragement throughout my research. The experience I gained and opportunities I had in this lab greatly exceeded my expectations, for which I am grateful. I would also like to thank Dr. Decker and Dr. Zhang for being members on my committee and for their input on my thesis. I would finally like to thank D...