The blood-brain barrier (BBB) remains a formidable obstacle in medicine, preventing efficient penetration of chemotherapeutic and diagnostic agents to malignant gliomas. Here, a transactivator of transcription (TAT) peptide-modified gold nanoparticle platform (TAT-Au NP) with a 5 nm core size is demonstrated to be capable of crossing the BBB efficiently and delivering cargoes such as the antica...

Colorimetric plasmon sensors for naked-eye detection of molecular recognition events have been proposed. Here, 3-layered Ag nanoparticle (NP) sheets on a Au substrate fabricated using the Langmuir-Schaefer method were utilized as the detection substrates. A drastic color change was observed following the binding of Au NPs via avidin-biotin interactions at less than 30% surface coverage. The col...

Time-resolved photoluminescence (PL) and transient absorption (TA) spectroscopy are conducted in order to get knowledge on the excited state of CdSe nanorods (NR), and to assess the impact of Au nanoparticles (NP) on the carrier dynamics of hybrid Au-CdSe NRs. The decay dynamics measured in solution show an increase of non-radiative decay channels in the presence of Au NPs, whose characteristic...

An optical fibre long period grating (LPG), modified with a coating of silica gold (SiO2:Au) core/shell nanoparticles (NPs) deposited using the layer-by-layer (LbL) method, was employed for the development of a bio-sensor. The SiO2:Au NPs were electrostatically assembled onto the LPG with the aid of a poly(hydrochloride ammonium) (PAH) polycation layer. The LPG sensor operates at the phase matc...

Gold (Au) nanoparticles (NPs) are known experimentally to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) to carbon monoxide (CO), with far superior performance to Au foils. To obtain guidance in designing improved CO2 catalysts, we want to understand the nature of the active sites on Au NPs. Here, we employed multiscale atomistic simulations to computationally synthesize and characterize a 10 nm thick Au NP on a ...

In this paper, we present an investigation on the use of Au-Ag alloy popcorn-shaped nanoparticles (NPs) to realise the broadband optical absorption enhancement of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs). Both simulation and experimental results indicate that compared with regular plasmonic NPs, such as nano-spheres, irregular popcorn-shaped alloy NPs exhibit absorption enhancement over a broad wavele...

bottom-up approaches have emerged as promising alternatives for generation of organized nanostructures and electronic components. [ 4 ] Bottom-up techniques generally rely upon molecular self-assembly phenomena to produce defi ned structures that could be practically utilized. [ 5 , 6 ] Here, we describe a new bottom-up approach for construction of thin-fi lm TCEs through self-assembly of alkyl...

The construction of dimethylenebis(eicosyldimethylammonium bromide) surfactant-directed gold nanoparticles (NPs) has been accomplished via a one-pot thermal reduction of HAuCl4 with trisodium citrate. The effect of cationic twin-tail surfactants, dimethylenebis(hexadecyldimethylammonium bromide) (16-2-16), dimethylenebis(octadecyldimethylammonium bromide) (18-2-18) and dimethylenebis(eicosyldim...

A simple concept is proposed to metallise polyamide 66 (PA66) spherulite structures with in situ synthesised gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) using a wet chemical method. This cost-effective approach, applied to produce a PA66/Au NP hybrid material, offers the advantages of controlling the nanoparticle size, the size distribution and the organic-inorganic interactions. These are the key factors that...

We present a new type of nanoparticle-based DNA sensor using surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) on gold nanoparticle (Au NP) aggregates formed by DNA photoligation. The DNA sensor exploits the photoligation reaction between oligodeoxynucleotides (ODNs) attached to the surfaces of Au NPs in the presence of target DNA (T-DNA). When hybridization takes place between the ODNs and T-DNA, Au NP...