We report herein a straightforward and label-free approach to prepare luminescent mesoporous silica nanoparticles. We found that calcination at 400 °C can grant mesoporous organosilica nanoparticles with strong fluorescence of great photo- and chemical stability. The luminescence is found to originate from the carbon dots generated from the calcination, rather than the defects in the silica mat...

The morphogenesis of the silica cell walls (called frustules) of unicellular algae known as diatoms is one of the most intriguing mysteries of the diatoms. To study frustule morphogenesis, optical, electron and atomic force microscopy has been extensively used to reveal the frustule morphology. However, since silica frustules are opaque, past observations were limited to outer and fracture surf...

Low-temperature solution processible and solventless silica-epoxy hybrid materials composed of organically modified silica nanoparticles and epoxy monomers were successfully fabricated through simple sol-gel process and solvent evaporation. These silica-epoxy hybrid materials exhibited the homogeneous dispersion without any phase separation, aggregation, and gelation in the solventless environm...

A hybrid of Ag nanoparticle (NP)-embedded thin silica-coated graphene oxide (GO@SiO₂@Ag NPs) was prepared as a surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrate. A 6 nm layer of silica was successfully coated on the surface of GO by the physical adsorption of sodium silicate, followed by the hydrolysis of 3-mercaptopropyl trimethoxysilane. Ag NPs were introduced onto the thin silica-coated gra...

A simple procedure was developed for preparing a carbon-coated fused-silica capillary for use in sheathless capillary electrophoresis/electrospray mass spectrometry (CE/ESI-MS). The tapered capillary tip was smeared with a marker pen before coating with carbon using a soft pencil. The layer from the ink of the marker pen was critical to the preparation of the carbon-coated capillary. The fabric...

The aim of this work was to investigate the effect of silica coating on bioactivity and biodegradability of hydroxyapatite. In this purpose, we firstly attempted to synthesis hydroxyapatite (HA) nanoparticles and its silica coated (Si-HA) sample in collagen matrix using calcium chloride, sodium phosphate and sodium silicate. Characterization of the sample was carried out using Fourier transform...