Metallic nanoparticles basic principles

The basic principles of electrochemical biosensors are associated with their capability to detect a specific molecule with high specificity. Also, these characteristics are dictated by a better correlation between the biological component and the transducing element. Important advances in these aspects has been achieved with the utilization of several kinds of nanomaterials such as metal nanoparticles [21], oxide nanoparticles [22], magnetic nanomaterials [23], carbon materials [24,25] and metallophthalocyanines [26] to improve electrochemical signal of biocatalytic events occurred at electrode/electrolyte interface. 

The first two chapters of this work cover theoretical and practical aspects of the emission process, the spectroscopic techniques and the equipment used to characterize the emission. Chapter 3 introduces and reviews the property of circularly polarized emission, while Chapter 4 reviews the use of lanthanide ion complexes in bioimaging and fluorescence microscopy. Chapter 5 covers the phenomenon of two-photon absorption, its theory as well as applications in imaging, while Chapter 6 reviews the use of lanthanide ions as chemo-sensors. Chapter 7 introduces the basic principles of nanoparticle upconversion luminescence and its use for bioimaging and Chapter 8 reviews direct excitation of the lanthanide ions and the use of the excitation spectra to probe the metal ion s coordination environment in eoordination compounds and biopolymers. Finally, Chapter 9 describes the formation of heterobimetallic complexes, in whieh the lanthanide ion emission is promoted through the hetero-metal. 

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