Inorganic nanocrystals with controlled optical properties for engineering and biomedical applications

Work number - M 25 AWARDED

Authors:Seminko V.V., Maksimchuk P.O., Grygorova G.V., Dekaliuk M.O.

Presented by the Institute for Scintillation Materials of NASof Ukraine

The cycle of scientific publications consists of 31 scientific articles published from 2010 to 2015.

This series of works is a comprehensive study of the luminescent properties of a number of inorganic nanocrystals that have a significant potential for technology and medicine, namely, rare-earth doped nanocrystals of orthosilicates, oxides, phosphates, borates and vanadates and also carbon dots. The authors investigated thoroughly the mechanisms which determine the luminescence characteristics of each type of nanocrystals, factors which may affect these characteristics and methods enabling the control of luminescent properties of the nanocrystals by varying their size and geometry, atmosphere and heat treatment time, type and concentration of impurities.

The effect of the temperature-dependent surface segregation of impurity ions determined in this series of papers opens the possibility of controlling the distribution of impurities within doped nanocrystals, and, consequently, their luminescent properties by simple variation of the parameters of high temperature treatment of nanocrystals.

For the first time, the possibility to control the antioxidant activity of CeO₂ nanocrystals, and the processes of interaction of these nanocrystals with reactive oxygen species by the methods of optical spectroscopy was shown.

For the first time the spectral properties of carbon dots at the level of individual particles were investigated and the nature of luminescence centers in these nanoparticles was determined.

The prospects ofthe use of orthovanadate nanocrystals and carbon dots for labeling cell structures were shown. In in vitro experiments ability of Gd_0.7Y_0.2Eu_0.1VO₄ nanocrystals to penetrate into liver cells and to accumulate in the nuclei was determined. Ability of carbon dots to preferential accumulation in apoptotic cells as compared with native ones was demonstrated.

Number of publications: 82, including 31 papers on the subject of the work (14 - in foreign journals) and 51 abstracts. The total number of references to the publications of the authors is 89 (according to the Scopus database), h - index = 7. 

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