ИСТИНА

In this work, ensembles of silicon nanoparticles (2 – 200 nm) fabricated through pulse laser ablation in water, and porous silicon nanocrystals (2 – 50 nm) fabricated through electrochemical etching were studied as potential contrasting agents for optical coherence tomography (OCT). The silicon nanoparticle ensembles demonstrate effective light scattering for the both fabrication methods. The 0.3% agar gel was used as a model object mimicking biotissue. The laser-ablated nanoparticles or the mechanically grinded porous silicon were topically applied on the phantom surface yielding contrasting of maximum 14 dB and 30 dB, respectively, for the considered nanoparticle classes. Thus, studied silicon nanoparticle ensembles are shown to be promising as contrasting agents in OCT imaging of turbid media including biotissues.