Lighting up micromotors with quantum dots for smart chemical sensing
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Updated: Apr 5, 2026

17:14
Compact Quantum Dots for Single-molecule Imaging
Published on: October 9, 2012
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B Jurado-Sánchez1, A Escarpa, J Wang
1Department of NanoEngineering, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA. josephwang@ucsd.edu.
Abstract:
A new "on-the-fly" chemical optical detection strategy based on the incorporation of fluorescence CdTe quantum dots (QDs) on the surface of self-propelled tubular micromotors is presented. The motion-accelerated binding of trace Hg to the QDs selectively quenches the fluorescence emission and leads to an effective discrimination between different mercury species and other co-existing ions.

