| Pacific Rim Symposium on Surfaces, Coatings and Interfaces (PacSurf 2016) | |
| Biomaterial Surfaces & Interfaces | Tuesday Sessions |
| Session BI-TuM |
| Session: | Bioimaging & Bionanotechnology |
| Presenter: | Olga Shimoni, University of Technology Sydney, Australia |
| Authors: | O. Shimoni, University of Technology Sydney, Australia K. Bray, University of Technology Sydney, Australia L. Cheung, University of Technology Sydney, Australia I. Aharonovich, University of Technology Sydney, Australia |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
In the last decade, nanodiamonds (NDs) have attracted much interest from the biological community as the ultimate agent for biomedical applications, such as biomarkers, drug and gene delivery and biocatalysts, owing to their chemical inertness, biocompatibility, prolonged photostability and negligible toxicity. Their fluorescence emanates from point defects (centres) that possess an unprecedented photostability and exhibit visible emission at room temperature. One of the most well-known centres is nitrogen-vacancy (NV) defects, mostly because of its potential use in quantum computer and nanomagnetometry applications. Here, we will demonstrate the utilisation of commercially available NDs with NV centres and in-house fabricated NDs with silicon-vacancy (SiV) defects for application in bio-imaging. We will discuss their optical properties, luminescence differences and opportunities for fluorescence enhancement. An additional advantage of using NDs in bio-imaging is that they are purely made of carbon, and carbon can be readily modified with functional groups to attach biomolecules using standard organic chemistry procedures. Therefore, we demonstrate surface functionalisation of NDs to achieve selective intracellular targeting. In summary, our results bring new advancement in fabrication and utilisation of NDs as targeted biomarkers.