Recent Advances in Analytical Applications of Nanomaterials in Liquid-Phase Chemiluminescence

Abstract

In recent years, many nanomaterials-assisted chemiluminescence (CL) systems have been developed to improve the sensitivity and to expand the scope of their analytical applications. In these new systems, nanomaterials participate in CL reactions as catalysts, labels, reductants, luminophors, or energy acceptors. This review mainly focuses on the recent analytical applications of metal nanoparticles, magnetic nanoparticles, quantum dots (QDs), and carbon-based nanomaterials (carbon nanotubes and graphene) in liquid-phase CL systems. Recent advances in electrochemiluminescence based on nanotechnology and its analytical applications, especially in immunoassay, DNA analysis, and other biological analyses, are also summarized. Finally, we discuss some critical challenges in this field and speculate about their solutions. A total of 177 references mainly in the last 5 years are included in this review.     

Biochemical and biomedical applications of multifunctional magnetic nanoparticles: a review

Nanotechnology offers tremendous potential for future medical diagnosis and therapy. Various types of nanoparticles have been extensively studied for numerous biochemical and biomedical applications. Magnetic nanoparticles are well-established nanomaterials that offer controlled size, ability to be manipulated by an external magnetic field, and enhancement of contrast in magnetic resonance imaging. As a result, these nanoparticles could have many applications including bacterial detection, protein purification, enzyme immobilization, contamination decorporation, drug delivery, hyperthermia, etc. All these biochemical and biomedical applications require that these nanoparticles should satisfy some prerequisites including high magnetization, good stability, biocompatibility, and biodegradability. Because of the potential benefits of multimodal functionality in biomedical applications, in this account highlights some general strategies to generate magnetic nanoparticle-based multifunctional nanostructures. After these magnetic nanoparticles are conjugated with proper ligands (e.g., nitrilotriacetate), polymers (e.g., polyacrylic acid, chitosan, temperature- and pH-sensitive polymers), antibodies, enzymes, and inorganic metals (e.g., gold), such biofunctional magnetic nanoparticles exhibit many advantages in biomedical applications. In addition, the multifunctional magnetic nanoparticles have been widely applied in biochemical fields including enzyme immobilization and protein purification.     

Synthesis and bio-applications of targeted magnetic-fluorescent composite nanoparticles

Magnetic-fluorescent nanoparticles have a tremendous potential in biology. As the benefits of these materials gained recognition, increasing attention has been given to the conjugation of magnetic-fluorescent nanoparticles with targeting ligands. The magnetic and fluorescent properties of nanoparticles offer several functionalities, including imaging, separation, and visualization, while the presence of a targeting ligand allows for selective cell and tissue targeting. In this review, methods for the synthesis of targeted magnetic-fluorescent nanoparticles are explored, and recent applications of these nanocomposites to the detection and separation of biomolecules, fluorescent and magnetic resonance imaging, and cancer diagnosis and treatment will be summarized. As these materials are further optimized, targeted magnetic-fluorescent nanoparticles hold great promise for the diagnosis and treatment of some diseases.     

应用于生物医疗领域的碳纳米点及其复合物

碳纳米点作为新兴的碳纳米材料,具备制备成本低、尺寸小、低毒、生物相容性高、水溶性好、易修饰、光物理性质独特等诸多优点,在生物医疗领域展现了独有的优势和应用前景。由于具有丰富的表面官能团,碳纳米点可以与靶向配体、医学影像造影剂、核酸、化学药物、光敏剂、光热转换试剂等功能性诊断治疗试剂相互作用形成复合物。目前,碳纳米点及其复合物在医学影像、基因治疗、化学药物治疗、光热、光动力治疗等生物医学诊断治疗领域的应用正在被广泛的开发和报道。这些工作对开发基于碳纳米点的医学诊断治疗试剂及其临床推进具有重要意义,为推进人类重大疾病的个体化、可视化、非入侵式、小损伤的诊断治疗提供一种新的药物体系。本文将关注应用于诊断治疗领域的碳纳米点及其复合物的设计、构建及性能研究,对已报道的基于碳纳米点的诊断治疗试剂在生物医疗领域的研究进展进行总结和讨论。     

荧光寿命显微成像技术及应用的最新研究进展

由于荧光寿命不受探针浓度、激发光强度和光漂白效应等因素影响,荧光寿命显微成像技术(fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy, FLIM)在监测微环境变化、反映分子间相互作用方面具有高特异性、高灵敏度、可定量测量等优点,近年来已被广泛应用于生物医学等领域.然而,尽管FLIM的发明和发展已历经数十年时间,其在实际应用中仍然面临着许多挑战.例如,其成像分辨率受衍射极限限制,而其成像速度与成像质量和寿命测量精度则存在相互制约的关系.近几年来,相关硬件和软件的快速发展及其与其他光学技术的结合,极大地推动了FLIM技术及其应用的新发展.本文简要介绍了基于时域和频域的不同寿命探测方法的FLIM技术的基本原理及特点,在此基础上概述了该技术的最新研究进展,包括其成像性能的提升和在生物医学应用中的研究现状,详细阐述了近几年来研究者们通过硬件和软件算法的改进以及与自适应光学、超分辨成像技术等新型光学技术的结合来提升FLIM的成像速度、寿命测量精度、成像质量和空间分辨率等方面所做的努力,以及FLIM在生物医学基础研究、疾病诊断与治疗、纳米材料的生物医学研究等方面的应用,最后对其未来发展趋势进行了展望.     

Ultrafast laser based “green” synthesis of non-toxic nanoparticles in aqueous solutions

Inorganic nanoparticles offer novel promising properties for biological sensing and imaging, as well as in therapeutics. However, these applications are often complicated by the possible toxicity of conventional nanomaterials, arising as a result of inadequate purification procedures of nanoparticles obtained via synthetic pathways using toxic or non-biocompatible substances. We review novel femtosecond laser-assisted methods, which enable the preparation of metal nanomaterials in clean, biologically friendly aqueous environment (“green” synthesis) and thus completely solve the toxicity problem. The proposed methods, including laser ablation and fragmentation, make possible the production of stable metal colloids of extremely small size (∼2 nm) with a low coefficient of variation (15–25%). Those nanoparticles exhibit unique surface chemistry and can be used for bio-imaging, cancer treatment and nanoparticle-enhanced Raman spectroscopy.     

纳米尺度下的局域场增强研究进展

金属纳米颗粒的等离激元共振引起的局域场增强效应,对显微成像、光谱学、半导体器件、非线性光学等诸多领域都具有极大的应用潜力。尤其是在光学纳米材料领域,通过亚波长金属纳米颗粒与电介质的组合引起局域场增强效应,提高了纳米材料的光学性能,并促进纳米材料在光学领域的应用。本文主要综述几种常见纳米结构所产生的局域场增强效应及其应用,详细介绍并总结了金属纳米材料的不同结构参数与局域场增强的关系及局域场增强在非线性光学、光谱学、半导体器件等领域的应用。未来,随着对金属纳米材料的研究愈发深入,局域场增强的应用将更加广泛,这将对诸多领域的发展产生重要影响。     

Magnetic nanoparticle-based cancer therapy

Nanoparticles(NPs) with easily modified surfaces have been playing an important role in biomedicine.As cancer is one of the major causes of death,tremendous efforts have been devoted to advance the methods of cancer diagnosis and therapy.Recently,magnetic nanoparticles(MNPs) that are responsive to a magnetic field have shown great promise in cancer therapy.Compared with traditional cancer therapy,magnetic field triggered therapeutic approaches can treat cancer in an unconventional but more effective and safer way.In this review,we will discuss the recent progress in cancer therapies based on MNPs,mainly including magnetic hyperthermia,magnetic specific targeting,magnetically controlled drug delivery,magnetofection,and magnetic switches for controlling cell fate.Some recently developed strategies such as magnetic resonance imaging(MRI) monitoring cancer therapy and magnetic tissue engineering are also addressed.     

Recent progress in all-inorganic metal halide nanostructured perovskites: Materials design,optical properties,and application

Low-dimensional all-inorganic metal halide perovskite (AIMHP) materials, as a new class of nanomaterials, hold great promise for various optoelectronic devices. In the past few years, tremendous progress has been achieved in the development of efficient and stable AIMHP nanomaterials for optical property studies and related applications. Here, we offer a critical overview on the unique merits and the state-of-the-art design of AIMHP using different composition strategies. Then, the effects of material compositions, dimensionality, morphologies and structures on optical properties are summarized. We also comprehensively present recent advances in the development AIMHP nanomaterials for practical applications including solar cells, light-emitting diodes, lasers and photodetectors. Lastly, the critical challenges and future opportunities in this emerging field are highlighted.     

Preparation and Biomedical Applications of Multicolor Carbon Dots: Recent Advances and Future Challenges

Multicolor carbon dots (CDs) as an emerging subclass of carbonaceous nanomaterials have inspired intensive attention due to the fascinating fluorogenic properties of quantum dots, exhibiting great potential applications in the biomedical field. In some cases, reported CDs with blue or green fluorescence are not desirable for further biological applications owing to the conflicting background autofluorescence, low penetration, and relatively large damage to biological tissue. However, multicolor CDs that can work in the longer wavelength region are being developed to address this issue by overcoming the autofluorescence from the cellular components (usually in the blue and green range). In this review, the development of multicolor CDs is described comprehensively, including for red-emissive or NIR-emissive CDs. Additionally, the preparation methods of multicolor CDs are summarized. Moreover, the factors affecting the luminescence of multicolor CDs are discussed in detail, and the biomedical applications are emphasized from multiple perspectives.     

Deep Learning Methods for Heart Sounds Classification: A Systematic Review

The automated classification of heart sounds plays a significant role in the diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). With the recent introduction of medical big data and artificial intelligence technology, there has been an increased focus on the development of deep learning approaches for heart sound classification. However, despite significant achievements in this field, there are still limitations due to insufficient data, inefficient training, and the unavailability of effective models. With the aim of improving the accuracy of heart sounds classification, an in-depth systematic review and an analysis of existing deep learning methods were performed in the present study, with an emphasis on the convolutional neural network (CNN) and recurrent neural network (RNN) methods developed over the last five years. This paper also discusses the challenges and expected future trends in the application of deep learning to heart sounds classification with the objective of providing an essential reference for further study.     

Applications of nanomaterials in the different fields of photosciences

Current developments in nanostructured materials and nanotechnology will have profound impact in many areas such as energy technologies and biomedical applications. These include solar cells, energy storage, environmental control, tissue engineering, bioprobe, biomarking, cancer diagnosis, cancer therapy, and drug delivery. Our recent work covers a wide range of nanomaterials research for a variety of applications including to produce organic-inorganic nanocomposites which will be used in for constructing light emitting diodes, photovoltaic cells, future organic solar cells etc, biomedicine and photocatalytic. In this article the chief scientific and technical aspects of nanotechnology are introduced and some of its potential applications have been discussed.     

New possibilities for materials science with STED microscopy

Up to now, STED microscopy has been mainly used to study biological systems. However with the development of the technique, many benefits are expected in materials science for imaging 1D, 2D or 3D nanomaterials. We review here the use of STED microscopy in materials science, its challenges, and opportunities.     

System-level multi-target drug discovery from natural products with applications to cardiovascular diseases

The term systems pharmacology describes a field of study that uses computational and experimental approaches to broaden the view of drug actions rooted in molecular interactions and advance the process of drug discovery. The aim of this work is to stick out the role that the systems pharmacology plays across the multi-target drug discovery from natural products for cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). Firstly, based on network pharmacology methods, we reconstructed the drug–target and target–target networks to determine the putative protein target set of multi-target drugs for CVDs treatment. Secondly, we reintegrated a compound dataset of natural products and then obtained a multi-target compounds subset by virtual-screening process. Thirdly, a drug-likeness evaluation was applied to find the ADME-favorable compounds in this subset. Finally, we conducted in vitro experiments to evaluate the reliability of the selected chemicals and targets. We found that four of the five randomly selected natural molecules can effectively act on the target set for CVDs, indicating the reasonability of our systems-based method. This strategy may serve as a new model for multi-target drug discovery of complex diseases.     

Application of X-ray fluorescence spectrometry in plant science: Solutions,threats, and opportunities

X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry is a nondestructive, rapid, simultaneous multi-elemental imaging methodology for plant materials. Its applications are broad and cover most of the elements with varying concentration below the parts per million (ppm). XRF is a well-established atomic spectrometric technique that is also being used as a field portable instrumentation. In recent decades, XRF has been considered a very versatile tool for plant nutrition diagnosis due to its fast and multi-elemental analytical imaging response directly from a solid sample. In this review, we have mainly focused on the recent developments and advancements in XRF spectrometry to analyze plant materials. We have also included the fundamental aspects and instrumentation for XRF spectrometry for its use in plants imaging. We have also covered the use of XRF for vegetal tissues and plant leaves. Mainly, we have briefly focused on some features of sampling procedures and calibration strategies regarding the use of XRF for plant tissues. Microchemical imaging applications by XRF, μ-XRF, μ-SRXRF, and TXRF have been covered for a wide variety of plant tissues such as leaves, roots, stems, and seeds.     

Fluorescent Metallic Nanoclusters: Electron Dynamics,Structure, and Applications

Atomically precise Au nanoclusters (NCs) have emerged as fascinating fluorescent nanomaterials and attracted considerable research interest in both fundamental research and practical applications. Due to enhanced quantum confinement, they possess extraordinary optical, electronic, and magnetic properties and therefore are very promising for a wide range of applications, including biosensing, bioimaging, catalysis, photonics, and molecular electronics. Remarkable progress has been reported for the fundamental understanding, synthesis techniques, and applications. In this review, the updated advances are summarized in Au NCs, including synthesis techniques, optical properties, and applications. In particular, we focus on the optical properties and electron dynamic processes. In addition, the progress in other noble metallic NCs is included in this Review, such as Ag, Cu, Pt, and alloy, which have attracted much research interest recently. Finally, an outlook is presented for such fascinating nanomaterials in both aspects of future fundamental research and potential applications.     

Green Sources Derived Carbon Dots for Multifaceted Applications

For the past decade, the Carbon dots (CDs) a tiny sized carbon nanomaterial are typically much attentive due to their outstanding properties. Nature is a fortune of exciting starting materials that provides many inexpensive and renewable resources which have received the topmost attention of researchers because of non-hazardous and eco-friendly nature that can be used to prepare green CDs by top-down and bottom-up synthesis including hydrothermal carbonization, microwave synthesis, and pyrolysis due to its simple synthetic process, speedy reactions and clear-cut end steps. Compared to chemically derived CDs, green CDs are varied by their properties such as less toxicity, high water dispersibility, superior biocompatibility, good photostability, bright fluorescence, and ease of modification. These nanomaterials are a promising material for sensor and biological fields, especially in electrochemical sensing of toxic and trace elements in ecosystems, metal sensing, diagnosis of diseases through bio-sensing, and detection of cancerous cells by in-vitro and in-vivo bio-imaging applications. In this review, the various synthetic routes, fluorescent mechanisms, and applications of CDs from discovery to the present are briefly discussed. Herein, the latest developments on the synthesis of CDs derived from green carbon materials and their promising applications in sensing, catalysis and bio-imaging were summarized. Moreover, some challenging problems, as well as upcoming perspectives of this powerful and tremendous material, are also discussed.

     

Aggregation resistant zwitterated superparamagnetic nanoparticles

Superparamagnetic nanoparticles (NPs) are promising for biomedical applications since they can be directed toward the organ of interest using an external magnetic field. They are also good contrast agents for magnetic resonance imaging and have potential for the treatment of malignant tumors (i.e., hyperthermia). Therefore, there is a need to produce stable, non-aggregating superparamagnetic nanomaterials that can withstand the in vivo environment. In this work, the colloidal stability of a dispersion of iron oxide NPs was enhanced by functionalizing them with a short zwitterionic siloxane shell in aqueous media. The stabilization procedure yields superparamagnetic nanomaterials, ca. 10 nm in diameter, with saturation magnetization of about 54 emu/g that resist aggregation at physiological salt concentration, temperature, and pH. The loading of the zwitterionic shell was established with diffuse reflectance infrared spectroscopy and thermal gravimetric analysis. X-ray and electron diffraction verified the starting magnetite phase, and that no change in phase occurred on surface functionalization.     

第二讲光电子技术在保健医疗和生物学应用中的进展

文章论述了激光与光电子技术在人类保健、医疗以及生命科学应用中的作用和意义.综述了光活检技术、光美容医疗和生物光子技术等光电子技术在保健、医疗和生物学领域中的具体应用.重点介绍了：（1）用于组织病理诊断的光活检技术,其中包括光活检的发展历史、技术优点、研究现状,以及荧光光谱和成像技术等实用光活检技术的临床应用;（2）非消融性光疗的基本作用机制和研究进展;（3）扫描共焦显微术、多光子荧光显微术、近场光学扫描显微术和光镊等显微生物成像技术的工作原理和应用.最后,展望了激光与光电子技术在生命科学中的应用前景.     

Cationic Polyelectrolyte Mediated Synthesis of MnO2‐Based Core–Shell Structures as Activatable MRI Theranostic Platform for Tumor Cell Ablation

Improving nanomaterial imaging contrast is critical for disease diagnosis and treatment monitoring. Designing activatable imaging agents has the extra benefit of improving signal‐to‐background ratios, as well as reporting local environmental cues. MnO₂, sensitive to local pH and redox state, is used to modulate the tumor microenvironment and can serve as a potential activatable magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) agent. However, the intrinsic 2D form may limit their applications in nanomedicine. Here, a novel facile aqueous route to synthesize MnO₂ nanoshells on various core nanomaterials, regardless of their chemical nature and morphology, is reported. Cationic polyelectrolyte is discovered to be the key to obtain a universal method of coatingMnO₂ on nanomaterials. Taking Cu_2−xSe@MnO₂ as an example, a remarkable three times enhanced T₁‐MRI contrast in a tumor reducing environment is demonstrated. Combined with large optical absorbance of inner Cu_2−xSe cores, they can be applied for efficient redox‐activated MRI‐guided photothermal therapy in the NIR‐II window in vitro and in vivo.