Práce se zabývá rozsáhlou analýzou současného stavu poznání užití nanomateriálů v památkové péči při obnově, stabilizaci, konzervaci a restaurování historických materiálů, prezentuje dílčí experimentální výsledky (laboratorní a in-situ) použití vybraných nanosystémů aplikovaných…
Phase-change heat transfer is an important process used in many engineering thermal designs. Boiling is an important phase change phenomena as it is a common heat transfer process in many thermal systems. Phase change processes are critical to thermodynamic cycles as most closed…
The lungs are an attractive route for drug delivery due to their high epithelial surface area available for absorption, a thin epithelium and extensive vasculature to name a few. Accordingly, a vast number of small molecule drugs, peptides, and proteins have been used to investi…
Primary liver cancer is the 4th most common malignancy worldwide, accounting for >600,000 deaths/year globally. Loco-regional chemotherapy fails to deliver anticancer drugs specifically to hepatic cancer cells resulting in low anticancer activity and severe toxicities. This diss…
Resonant coupling of localized surface plasmon resonances (LSPRs) in noble metallic nanostructures to incident radiation and the related subject of localized behavior of electromagnetic waves are currently of great interest due to their potential application to sensors, biochemi…
Monodispersed gold particles of various sizes, morphologies, and internal structures were prepared by the reduction in homogeneous solutions of tetrachloroauric(III) acid (HAuCl4) with iso-ascorbic acid. The mechanisms responsible for their formation were investigated with speci…
Transparent conducting oxide (TCOs) thin films, including non-stoichiometric tin doped indium oxide (ITO) and aluminium doped zinc oxide (AZO), have found considerable applications in various displays, solar cells, and electrochromic devices, due to their unique combination of h…
Polymeric systems become increasingly complicated and multifunctional if they involve a larger level of structural complexity. In the last couple of decades the level of interest has gradually shifted from the μm-scale to the nm-scale region, for instance, systems having at leas…
The wide scale use of ZnO nanoparticles (NPs) in the world consumer market has resulted in likelihood of exposure to human beings. The present study was aimed to assess the in vitro and in vivo interactions of ZnO NPs in the mammalian system and to elucidate the possible mechani…
Nanoparticles have potential biomedical applications because of their special physical properties. Multi-scale nanoparticles contrast agents are those particles that provide contrast in different scale imaging modalities. Such particles are of great interest for monitoring anti-…
Parkinson's disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder, which has a devastating impact on the lives of patients, characterised primarily by the loss of dopamine-producing neurons in the brain. Drug delivery to the mammalian brain is notoriously difficult due to the…
The ultrafast charge dynamics in a number of nanostructured materials relevant to the production of renewable energy are investigated using ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy. The materials include mercury telluride and cadmium mercury telluride quantum dots, and gold n…
Organosilica nanoparticles have attracted a lot of research interest in a variety of areas such as drug delivery and catalysis because of their properties which include high surface area as well as tunable particle and pore size. In particular, nanoparticles with large pore size…
Optical trapping of metal nanoparticles investigates phenomena at the interface of plasmonics and optical micromanipulation. This thesis combines ideas of optical properties of metals originating from solid state physics with force mechanism resulting from optical trapping. We e…
Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy (STM) was utilised together with the high resolution depth-profiling capabilities of Medium Energy Ion Scattering (MEIS), a technique traditionally associated with single crystal substrates, to probe the mean size and depth dependent composition pr…
This Thesis reports the synthesis, purification and characterisation of gold nanoparticles (NPs) functionalised with a monolayer of hydrazone ligands in order to perform post-synthetic manipulations of the NP-bound monolayer exploiting dynamic covalent chemistry. NP post-synthet…
The work presented in this thesis reports the use of a series of novel thiobiuret metal complexes [M(SON(CNiPr2)2)n] (M = Cu, Ni, Fe, Zn, Cd or In; n = 2 or 3) for the first time as single source precursors for the colloidal synthesis of metal sulfide nanoparticles. Other single…
Silica nanoparticles are effective fluorophore carriers with high potential in imaging, diagnostics, and therapy. The particles are resistant to drastic change of environmental conditions (pH, temperature etc.) and insulate the dyes so as to protect them from photobleaching. Sil…
The work described herein deals with the synthesis and characterization of lead chalcogenide thin films and nanocrystals. The first part of thesis describes the properties of semiconductors followed by an analysis on the chemical vapour deposition and nanoparticulate formation. …