Blue-violet luminescence double peak of In-doped films prepared by radio frequency sputtering

ZnO films doped with different contents of indium were prepared by radio frequency sputtering technique. The structural, optical and emission properties of the films were characterized at room temperature using XRD, XPS, UV-vis-NIR and PL techniques. Results showed that the indium was successfully incorporated into the c-axis preferred orientated ZnO films, and the In-doped ZnO films are of over 80% optical transparency in the visible range. Furthermore, a double peak of blue-violet emission with a constant energy interval (similar to 0.17 eV) was observed in the PL spectra of the samples with area ratio of indium chips to the Zn target larger than 2.0%. The blue peak comes from the electron transition from the Zn-i level to the top of the valence band and the violet peak from the In-Zn donor level to the V-Zn level, respectively.

Determination of urinary oxidative DNA damage marker 8-hydroxy-2 '-deoxyguanosine and the association with cigarette smoking

8-hydroxy-2'-deoxyguanosine (8OHdG) has been widely used as a biomarker of oxidative DNA damage in both animal models and human studies. To evaluate the effect of cigarette smoking on oxidative stress, we studied the levels of urinary 8OHdG from smokers and non-smokers and investigated the association with cigarette smoking. The urinary 8OHdG concentrations were determinated by capillary electrophoresis with end-column amprometric detection (CE-AD) after a single-step solid phase extraction (SPE), and then quantitatively expressed as a function of creatinine excretion. To increase the concentration sensitivity, a dynamic pH junction was used and the focusing effect was obvious when using 30 mM phosphate (pH 6.50) as sample matrix. The limit of detection is 4.3 nM (signal-to-noise ratio S/N = 3). The relative standard deviation (R.S.D.) was 1.1% for peak current, and 2.3% for migration time. Based on the selected CE-AD method, it was found that the mean value of urinary 8OHdG levels in the smokers significantly higher than that in non-smokers (31.4 +/- 18.9 nM versus 14.4 +/- 7.6 nM, P = 0.0004; 23.5 +/- 21.3 mug g(-1) creatinine versus 12.6 +/- 13.2 mug g(-1) creatinine, P = 0.028). (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Simultaneous determination of methylene blue and new methylene blue by slab optical waveguide spectroscopy and artificial neural networks

A slab optical waveguide (SOWG) has been used for study of adsorption of both methylene blue (MB) and new methylene blue (NMB) in liquid-solid interface. Adsorption characteristics of MB and NMB on both bare SOWG and silanized SOWG by octadecyltrichlorosilane (ODS) were compared. The simultaneous determinations of both MB and NMB were explored by flow injection SOWG spectrophotometric analysis and artificial neural networks (ANNs) for the first time. Concentrations of MB and NMB were estimated simultaneously with the ANNs. Results obtained with SOWG were compared with those got by conventional UV-visible spectrophotometry. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V All rights reserved.

An Efficient Nanocrystalline La2O3:Tm3+ Blue Phosphor for Field-Emission Displays with High Color Purity

Nanocrystalline Tm3+-doped La2O3 phosphors were prepared through a Pechini-type sol-gel process. X-ray diffraction, field-emission scanning electron microscopy, photoluminescence, and cathodoluminescence spectra were utilized to characterize the synthesized phosphors. Under the excitation of UV light (234 nm) and low-voltage electron beams (1-3 kV), the Tm3+-doped La2O3 phosphors show the characteristic emissions of Tm3+(D-1(2), (1)G(4)-F-3(4), H-3(6) transitions).

Rapid synthesis of polyethylenimine-protected Prussian blue nanocubes through a thermal process

Polyethylenimine (PEI)-protected Prussian blue nanocubes have been simply synthesized by heating an acidic mixture of PEI, FeCl3, K3Fe(CN)(6), and KCI. The experiment results presented here demonstrate that the pH of the mixture plays an important role in controlling the shape and composition of the resultant product.

Layer-by-layer assembly of carbon nanotubes and Prussian blue nanoparticles: A potential tool for biosensing devices

A promising method for assembling carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and poly(diallyldimethylammonium chloride) protected Prussian blue nanoparticles (P-PB) to form three-dimensional (3D) nanostructured films is proposed. The electrostatic interaction, combined with layer-by-layer self-assembly (LBL), between negatively charged CNTs and positively charged P-PB is strong enough to drive the formation of the 3D nanostructured films. Thus, prepared multilayer films were characterized by ultraviolet-visible-near-infrared spectroscopy (UV-vis-NIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and cyclic voltammetry (CV).

Blue-light emission of mesoporous SBA-15 covalently bonded with carbazole chromophore

Much attention has been paid to carbazole derivatives for their potential applications as optical materials. For the first time, the blue-light-emitting carbazole chromophore has been covalently bonded to the ordered mesoporous SBA-15 (The resultant hybrid mesoporous materials are denoted as carbazole-SBA-15) by co-condensation of tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) and prepared compound 3-[N-3-(triethoxyilyl)propyl]ureyl-9-ethyl-carbazole (denoted as carbazole-Si) in the presence of Pluronic P123 surfactant. The results of H-1 NMR and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) reveal that carbazole-Si has been successfully synthesized.

Investigation on charge transfer bands of Ce4+ in Sr2CeO4 blue phosphor

Bulk and nano-materials Sr2CeO4 were prepared by solid-state reaction and sol-gel technique, respectively. Photoluminescence shows that luminescence has the characteristic of a ligand-to-metal charge transfer (CT) emission. Compared with bulk Sr2CeO4, the nano-material exhibits stronger emission intensity, longer decay time, and higher CT excitation energy. Three CT excitation peaks were observed in both bulk and nano samples.