Synthesis and characterization of biocompatible nanodiamond-silk hybrid material

Asma Khalid; Rebecca Lodin; Peter Domachuk; Hu Tao; Jodie E Moreau; David L Kaplan; Fiorenzo G Omenetto; Brant C Gibson; Snjezana Tomljenovic-Hanic

doi:10.1364/BOE.5.000596

Synthesis and characterization of biocompatible nanodiamond-silk hybrid material

Biomed Opt Express. 2014 Jan 27;5(2):596-608. doi: 10.1364/BOE.5.000596. eCollection 2014 Feb 1.

Authors

Asma Khalid¹, Rebecca Lodin², Peter Domachuk², Hu Tao³, Jodie E Moreau³, David L Kaplan³, Fiorenzo G Omenetto⁴, Brant C Gibson⁵, Snjezana Tomljenovic-Hanic¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Physics, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia.
² School of Physics, University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW 2006, Australia.
³ Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts 02155, USA.
⁴ Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts 02155, USA ; Department of Physics, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts 02155, USA.
⁵ School of Physics, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia ; present address: Applied Physics, School of Applied Sciences, RMIT University, Melbourne 3001, Australia.

Abstract

A new hybrid material consisting of nanodiamonds (NDs) and silk has been synthesized and investigated. NDs can contain bright fluorescence centers, important for bioprobes to image biological structures at the nanoscale and silk provides a transparent, robust matrix for these nanoparticles in-vivo or in-vitro. The ND-silk hybrid films were determined to be highly transparent in the visible to near infrared wavelength range. The NDs embedded in silk exhibited significant enhancement of emission relative to air, correlating with theoretical predictions. Furthermore, animal toxicity tests confirmed ND-silk films to be non-toxic in an in-vivo mice model.

Keywords: (160.4236) Nanomaterials; (180.1790) Confocal microscopy; (300.2530) Fluorescence, laser-induced.