What is Hybrid Silica?
The term “hybrid” means different things to an automaker, geneticist and materials scientist. Silica is often confused with other silicon-based materials such as silicone; and amorphous silica has very different properties than crystalline silica. In the following sections we clarify the meaning of each of these terms from the perspective of a materials scientist. The starting point is amorphous silica, the inorganic material that is the basic building block of many of our products. Next, we describe how silica is combined with organic materials to make hybrids and we provide an introduction to C•spec™ particles, HST’s first product.
A Biocompatible, Green Material
Silicon is one of the most abundant elements on earth, but it is predominantly found bonded to oxygen as silica. Silica (silicon dioxide or SiO2) is the natural oxide formed when the element silicon...
Hybrid Materials from Sol-Gel Chemistry
Hybrid materials are comprised of inorganic and organic building blocks. Such materials can reflect the properties of multiple individual components to create a material that is better suited to an application than its parts...
C•spec™ particles are a class of organically modified materials that offer unprecedented control of nanoscale morphology and functionality - a highly versatile, thermally stable and “green” materials platform...
At HST, we refer to the fluorescent silica nanoparticles as C•spec™ particles. The terms following the • help users identify key architectural features or “specs”. For example...
Biocompatible silica C•spec™ particles have proven to be a platform for biological imaging and sensing applications from in vitro cell culture to in vivo whole body imaging...
