Novel Optical Nanoprobes for Chemical and Biological Analysis starts
with a brief introduction to several kinds of versatile nanomaterials
with novel optical properties, such as gold/silver nanoparticles,
quantum dots, upconversion nanoparticles and graphene. It mainly focuses
on the latest sensor design strategies, which apply the optical
properties of nanomaterials to various detection techniques including
colorimetry, fluorescence, and surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS).
These sensors are attractive owing to their high sensitivity, high
specificity, and potential for easy quantification of targets in many
applications, such as conventional chemical and biological analysis,
clinical diagnosis, and intracellular system sensing as well as
single-molecule detection. The challenges and future perspectives for
optical nanoprobes are also presented, such as the increase in
sensitivity for real environmental and clinical samples, the design and
application of multifunctional nanoplatforms, and biocompatibility of
nanomaterials.