Multi-emissive silicon quantum dots: synthesis, characteristics and their biological and analytical relevance

This critical review highlights the recent advances in synthesizing high-quality multi-emissive silicon quantum dots (MESiQDs), focusing on their biological and analytical applications. We focus on some of the major challenges that remain still now, and lessons learnt when working with MESiQD. Photo-physical properties of SiQDs are summarized to understand both the excitation wavelength-dependent and independent fluorescence (emission). The emission features depend on the silicon nanostructures, including QD surface configurations and conformations. Possible photoluminescence mechanisms have been elucidated to ascertain the future challenges towards the industrial use of silicon-based tunable multi-colour light emitters. (author)