Abstract

Serum albumin is the most abundant protein found in blood plasma. It has been shown that a small amount of serum albumin may leak into urine from blood if there is damage to kidneys. Therefore, the detection of urine albumin has become a non-invasive method for screening kidney disease. Cyanine dyes are a fluorescent compound, which are used in biotechnology such as membrane labeling and biomedical imaging. However, cyanine dyes in aqueous solution have shown tendencies to form H-aggregates, which in the transition moments of the cyanine dyes form a face-to-face arrangement. Due to the strong coupling of the transition dipole moment, the fluorescence of H-aggregates is quenching, thus greatly limiting their applications in biotechnology. In this thesis, we synthesize single crystalline H-aggregate nanoparticles by the self-assembly 3,3'-diethylthiadicarbocyanine iodide (DiSC2(5)) in NaOH and KOH aqueous solutions. The single crystalline H-aggregate nanoparticles show a lattice spacing of 0.26 nm and express a narrow absorption band at 450 nm, which is largely blued shifted with respect to the monomer band at 650 nm. After the addition of bovine serum albumin (BSA), the single crystalline H-aggregate nanoparticles further assemble into polycrystalline nanoclusters, which are highly fluorescent. The turn-on fluorescence is from the grain boundary of the polycrystalline nanoclusters. We find that the intensity of the turn-on fluorescence linearly increases with BSA concentrations, providing a new turn-on fluorescent probe for the detection of BSA in synthetic urine with the detection limit of 1-2 µM.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2022

Semester

Spring

Advisor

Fang, Jiyu

Degree

Master of Science in Materials Science and Engineering (M.S.M.S.E.)

College

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Department

Materials Science and Engineering

Degree Program

Materials Science and Engineering

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0008972; DP0026305

URL

https://purls.library.ucf.edu/go/DP0026305

Language

English

Release Date

May 2025

Length of Campus-only Access

3 years

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Campus-only Access)

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Restricted to the UCF community until May 2025; it will then be open access.

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