A FRET-based ratiometric sensor for mercury ions in water with multi-layered silica nanoparticles as the scaffold.

A FRET system was built for ratiometric sensing of Hg(2+) in water with multilayered silica nanoparticles as the scaffold. This architecture ensures the control over the location of both donor and acceptor and their separation distance within nanoparticles, affording higher energy transfer efficiency and higher signal-to-background ratio for particle-based sensing. This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2011