Abstract
In this paper, high-quality carboxyl-functionalized fluorescent (red, green, and blue emitting) nanospheres (46-103 nm) consisting of hydrophobic quantum dots (QDs) and polystyrene were prepared by a miniemulsion polymerization approach. This miniemulsion polymerization approach induced a homogeneous distribution and high aqueous-phase transport efficiency of fluorescent QDs in composite nanospheres, which proved the success of our encoding QDs strategy. The obtained fluorescent nanospheres exhibited high stability in aqueous solution under a wide range of pH, different salt concentrations, PBS buffer, and thermal treatment at 80°C. Based on the red emitting composite nanosphere, we performed fluorescent lateral flow immunoassay (LFIA) strips for high-sensitivity and rapid alpha-fetal protein detection. The detection limit reached 0.1 ng/mL, which was 200 times higher than commercial colloidal gold-labeled LFIA strips, and it reached similar detection level in enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay kit.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Article number | 1901 |
Journal | Journal of Nanoparticle Research |
Volume | 15 |
Issue number | 9 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Sep 2013 |
Keywords
- Composite nanospheres
- Fluorescent QDs
- Miniemulsion polymerization
- Polystyrene
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
- Condensed Matter Physics
- Modeling and Simulation
- Chemistry(all)
- Materials Science(all)
- Bioengineering