Silicon Nanoparticles for Bioapplications

Silicon based nanomaterials have been well studied and applied in bio-applications such as cell imaging, targeting, and drug delivery. The major interests for these nanoparticles (NPs), rely in their biocompatibility, intrinsic luminescence as well as photo- and electro- stability. Many in vitro and in vivo studies have indeed shown that Si NPs do not display any cytotoxicity and are good candidate for cancer labeling.
Here we report on the synthesis of Si NPs via wet chemistry methods either by reducing Si(OMe)4[2] in reverse micelle or oxidizing Mg2Si.[6] The Si NPs were fully characterized by HR-TEM, EDX, XPS, FT-IR, and their photophysical properties are discussed. Furthermore, we show that it is possible to control the surface functionalization of the NPs by covalently binding different functional groups for multimodal bio-imaging. The in vitro study, cellular localization, and cell viability test of Hela cells also give us a tool to understand these materials for further nanomedicine research.