Quantum Dots in Therapeutic, Diagnostic and Drug Delivery Applications “A brief Review”

Synthesis of materials at nano scale is one of the main challenges in nanotechnology for different applications such as semiconductor, superconductors, electro-optics devices, advanced ceramics, refractories, diagnostic imaging and drug delivery. Semiconductors nanocrystals, known as “Quantum Dots”, have emerged as new generation of nanomaterials due to their unique optical, electrical and electrochemical properties, for variety of applications such as contrasts agents, fluorescent labels, localized targeted drug delivery and new generation of biosensors. Quantum dots advantages over traditional nanomaterials are due to quantum confinement effect, which bring broad absorption spectra, superior brightness and durability for different applications. The most important factor in developing nano carriers for biological applications is the toxicity, so recent researches have been focused on heavy metal-free formulations and nontoxic ceramics and polymers. So, one of the main goals in this paper is to explicate efficiencies and deficiencies of recent advances in quantum dot based formulations with the least toxicity for bioimaging, therapeutic and drug delivery applications. Another area of quantum dot’s application is the determination of dopamine (DA). Due to basic role of DA in some diseases like Parkinson and Schizophrenia, its determination is important and thus, it is desirable to develop new, simple and rapid analytical methods for the determination of DA with high selectivity and sensitivity, especially for diagnostic applications. Recently, developments in nanotechnology and preparations of semiconductors quantum dots cause open a new field in photo-electrochemical methods based on semiconductors quantum dots for determination of DA. In this review, an attempt was made to elaborate the mentioned goals of the paper in details.