Over the past several decades, there have been numerous reports of chemically tailored Si-based luminescent nanoparticles for use in chemical detection. Many of these protocols require hazardous reagents such as hydrofluoric acid and sodium borohydride, or expensive equipment for vapor-phase synthesis. Recently, there have been reports of greener sol-gel derived luminescent nanoparticles using ascorbic acid and 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES). Building off of this work, we report an optimized method for preparing sol-gel derived luminescent nanoparticles with potential use chemical sensing. Optimization was determined by several factors, namely, emission intensity, shelf-life, and photostability. These particles have been characterized by luminescence spectroscopy, AFM ,and FTIR. Results show that these particles are 4 nm in diameter, with a λex,max = 400 and λem,max= 440. Ongoing studies include surface functionalization through silanization and characterization of these nanoparticles for detecting analytes in solution.

Optimizing sol-gel derived Si-based nanoparticles for use in luminescence-based chemical sensing

2019 Spring National Meeting

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.