Biomaterials 2011, 32:2959–2968.CrossRef 25. Eriksson T, Börjesson J, Tjerneld F: Mechanism of surfactant effect in enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulose. Enzyme Microb Technol 2002, 31:353–364.CrossRef 26. Jiang Z, Qin H, Liang A: A new nanocatalytic spectrophotometric assay for cationic surfactant using ICG-001 solubility dmso phosphomolybdic acid-formic acid-nanogold as indicator reaction. Chin J Chem 2012, 30:59–64.CrossRef 27. He M, Huang P, Zhang C, Ma J, He R, Cui D: Phase- and size-controllable synthesis of hexagonal upconversion rare-earth fluoride nanocrystals through an oleic acid/ionic liquid two-phase system. Chemistry 2012, 18:5954–5969.CrossRef 28. Yajuan S, Yue C, Lijin T, Yi Y, Xianggui K, Junwei

Z, Hong Z: Controlled synthesis and morphology dependent upconversion luminescence of NaYF 4:Yb Er nanocrystals. Nanotechnology 2007, 18:275609.CrossRef 29. Moeller T, Martin DF, Thompson LC, Ferrús R, Feistel GR, Randall WJ: The coordination chemistry of yttrium and the rare earth metal ions. Chem Rev 1965, 65:1–50.CrossRef 30. Xu MH, Li ZH, Zhu

XZ, Hu NT, Wei H, Yang Z, Zhang YF: Hydrothermal/solvothermal synthesis graphene quantum dots and their biological applications. Nano Biomed Eng 2013, 5:65–71. 31. Stone HA: Dynamics of drop deformation and breakup in viscous fluids. Annu Rev Fluid Mech 1994, selleck chemicals llc 26:65–102.CrossRef 32. Sakya P, Seddon JM, Templer RH, Mirkin RJ, Tiddy GJT: Micellar cubic phases and their structural relationships: the nonionic surfactant system C12EO12/Water. Langmuir 1997, 13:3706–3714.CrossRef Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Authors’ contributions NZ designed the experiment, analyzed results,

and drafted the manuscript. PQ offered technical supports. NZ, PQ, KW, HF, GG, RH, and DC participated in revising the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.”
“Background Recently, ZnO nanocrystals (ZnO-NCs) have attracted a lot of interests because of their promising applications in optoelectronic devices, Chloroambucil such as light-emitting devices or UV photodetectors [1, 2]. The near-UV emission of ZnO-NC can also be utilized for efficient energy transfer to rare earth ions (e.g., Eu3+ and Er3+ ions) to obtain emission in the visible (for lighting) or in the near-infrared (for telecommunications) regions [3, 4]. In order to facilitate the energy transfer, the emission band from the excited ZnO must overlap with the absorption band of the rare earth ions. In our earlier work [3], for example, the ZnO films were doped with Cd ions to maximize the overlap between the emission of Cd-doped ZnO and the absorption of Eu3+ ions. We propose here the development and study of ZnO-NC embedded in a SiO2 matrix to have a broadband near-UV emission from ZnO to facilitate and optimize the energy transfer to rare earth ions without introducing doping ions such as Cd ions [3].