Noble metal nanostructures in optical biosensors: Basics, and their introduction to anti-doping detection.

Nanotechnology has illustrated significant potentials in biomolecular-sensing applications; particularly its introduction to anti-doping detection is of great importance. Illicit recreational drugs, substances that can be potentially abused, and drugs with dosage limitations according to the prohibited lists announced by the World Antidoping Agency (WADA) are becoming of increasing interest to forensic chemists. In this review, the theoretical principles of optical biosensors based on noble metal nanoparticles, and the transduction mechanism of commonly-applied plasmonic biosensors are covered. We review different classes of recently-developed plasmonic biosensors for analytic determination and quantification of illicit drugs in anti-doping applications. The important classes of illicit drugs include anabolic steroids, opioids, stimulants, and peptide hormones. The main emphasis is on the advantages that noble metal nano-particles bring to optical biosensors for signal enhancement and the development of highly sensitive (label-free) biosensors. In the near future, such optical biosensors may be an invaluable substitute for conventional anti-doping detection methods such as chromatography-based approaches, and may even be commercialized for routine anti-doping tests.

Through-space electronic communication of zinc phthalocyanine with substituted [60]Fullerene bearing O2Nxaza-crown macrocyclic ligands.

Two new macrocyclic ligands containing 17- and 19-membered O2N3-donor aza-crowns anchored to [60]Fullerene were synthesized and characterized by employing HPLC, electrospray ionization mass (ESI-MS), 1H and 13C NMR, UV-vis, IR spectroscopies, as well as powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) in solid state. TGA measurements revealed that upon linking each of these macrocycle rings to [60]Fullerene, the decomposition point measured for [60]Fullerene moiety was increased, indicating on the promoted stability of [60]Fullerene backbone during binding to these macrocyclic ligands. Moreover, the ground state non-covalent interactions of [60]Fullerene derivatives of O2Nx (x=2, and 3) aza-crown macrocyclic ligands namely, L1-L4 with zinc phthalocyanine (ZnPc) were also investigated by UV-vis absorption, steady state and time resolved fluorescence spectrophotometry in N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP). The calculation of Stern-Volmer constants (KSV) indicated on existence of an efficient quenching mechanism comprising of the excited singlet state of ZnPc in the presence of L1-L4. The observation of an appropriate correlation between decrease in fluorescence intensity and lifetime parameters led us to propose the occurrence of a static mechanism for the fluorescence quenching of ZnPc in the presence of L1-L3. The binding constants (KBH) of L1-L4/ZnPc were also determined applying the fluorescence quenching experiments. Meanwhile, the incompatibility of both KSV and KBH values found for L4 was also described in terms of structural features using DFT calculations using the B3LYP functional and 6-31G* basis set.