Cellular uptake kinetics of nanoparticles is one of the key issues determining the design and application of the particles. It is widely accepted that the nanoparticles getting into the cells mainly by endocytosis[1], a process which is found to be inhibited distinctly when temperature is below 4 °C. In fact, some nanoparticles could enter cells at lower temperatures or when the endocytosis was blocked[2–4]. Models describing the intrusion of the nanoparticles into cells only take the endocytosis process into consideration5. Meanwhile, other than the factors as concentration, size, electrical charge, temperature is also an important parameter affecting the uptake process, as binding with the receptors on the cell membranes[6] and endocytosis of nanoparticles[2, 3, 7] and etc. are all energy related. Thus, in this paper, the influence of temperature on the cellular uptake of QDs is studied experimentally, and a two-step mass transfer model describing the cellular internalization of the nanoparticles is developed by taking the temperature effect into consideration.

This content is only available via PDF.
You do not currently have access to this content.