Gerson Aguirre

Entrapment and retention of materials inside synthesized silica particles is an active research field due to its many industrial, biological and chemical activities including as molecular sieves due to their porosity. Many methods are used to create these particles, however, most require the removal of the templating agent by acid burning or calcining of the organic material which can be detrimental if a sensitive material needs to be preserved. What follows is a fabrication scheme by use of microfluidic channels that will allow particle synthesis and a narrow size distribution, allowing for retention of introduced material or molecules inside the silica particle that can be beneficial in biological applications. We report on the formation of silica particles with entrapped fluorescent semiconductor CdSe/ZnS quantum dots (QDs) by a fast synthesis method within a microfluidic cell. The hydrophobic nature of the QD surface stabilizes their dispersion in the oil phase. The synthesis of...

The focus of this presentation is the development of optically barcoded silica beads for use in high-throughput, multiplexed screening applications such as protein microarrays or flow cytometry. Luminescent semiconductor core-shell, CdSe/ZnS QDs nanocrystals (or quantum dots (QDs)) with different emission wavelengths (colors), and encapsulated in different compositions in silica beads are used to define an optical barcode. Quantum dots are usually fabricated so they are stably dispersed in an organic solvent. This is accomplished ...

Entrapment and retention of materials inside synthesized silica particles is an active research field due to its many industrial, biological and chemical activities including as molecular sieves due to their porosity. Many methods include layer-by-layer templating techniques, ...