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time observation and kinetic modeling of the cellular uptake and removal of silicon quantum dots. Biomaterials 2012, 33:4639–4645.CrossRef Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Authors’ contributions WW and JQ had conceived and designed experiments. XZ and YL carried out synthesis and characterization of biotin-DSPE. XZ, XH, and WH performed animal experiments. XZ and JQ performed cell experiments. XZ, WW, and JQ wrote the manuscript. All authors read and approved final manuscript.”
“Background MK-8776 research buy Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have been regarded as one of the most promising alternatives to silicon solar cells in renewable-energy research based on their special features, such as easy preparation process, low production costs, and relatively high conversion efficiencies [1]. One of the key considerations in fabricating efficient DSSCs is manipulating the structures of photoanodes to enable fast electron

transport, effective light harvesting and high dye loading [2–4]. In conventional TiO2-disordered nanoparticle-network photoanodes, a high-charge recombination loss limits the conversion efficiency to some degree due to the electron trapping and scattering at grain boundary as well as selleck kinase inhibitor inefficient light-scattering ability within small-sized nanoparticles. A promising strategy for improving electron transport in DSSCs is

to replace the nanoparticle materials of photoanodes by one-dimensional (1D) single-crystalline nanostructures such as nanorods, Bay 11-7085 nanotubes, and nanowires [5–8], which provide a direct conduction pathway for the rapid collection of photogenerated electrons without strong scattering transport. ZnO, as a wide-bandgap (ca. 3.37 eV) semiconductor, possesses an energy-band structure and physical properties similar to those of TiO2 but has higher bulk electronic mobility (205 to 300 cm2 · V−1 · s−1) than TiO2 (0.1 to 4.0 cm2 · V−1 · s−1) that would be favorable for electron transport [9–11]. Therefore, ZnO nanorod/nanowire arrays have been extensively studied and are expected to significantly improve the electron diffusion length in the photoanode films [12–17]. Unfortunately, the insufficient surface area of simple 1D nanostructures constrains the energy conversion efficiency to relatively low levels, which was mainly caused by the weak capability of dye loading and light harvesting. One effective strategy to overcome these problems is to utilize ultra-long ZnO nanowires to enhance amounts of dye loading [18, 19], and the branched microflowers to strengthen light scattering [20].