Dr. Thuan Nguyen Dao

Institute of Materials Science, Hanoi, Hà Nội, Vietnam

Dr. Thuan Nguyen Dao

Institute of Materials Science, Hanoi, Hà Nội, Vietnam

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Academic Career Length

6Years (2021-Present)

(Calculated once Scilit publication data is synced: current year − year of first publication + 1)

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13 October 2022 in Applied Sciences

Journal Article

Effects of Cold Plasma Treatment on Physical Modification and Endogenous Hormone Regulation in Enhancing Seed Germination and Radicle Growth of Mung Bean

This study investigated the effects of plasma duration and different reactive species ratios of cold atmospheric-pressure plasma treatment on both physical and endogenous hormone changes in enhancing the germination and growth of mung bean seeds. Seed germination and sprout stem length were significantly enhanced after plasma treatment. The germination rate increased eleven times after 12 h, while the radicles’ length increased ~3 times after 96 h with optimal plasma treatment parameters. SEM images showed that the plasmas directly induced gradual changes in the seed coating, including deformed and shrunken epidermis, and cracks with sizes varying from 0.2 to 1.5 µm after 4 min of plasma treatment. Water contact angle was reduced from 73° with untreated seed to almost 0° with 4 min treated seed. These effects could lead to better water absorption on the surface of treated seeds. We found that a plasma energy dosage of 0.08 Wh per seed and NO concentration between 20–95 ppm were the optimal enhancement conditions. We also showed that, for the first time, through delicate extraction, separation, and quantification processes, NO-induced upregulation of the natural growth hormone gibberellic acid could be the dominant phytochemistry pathway responsible for the enhancement effect.

13 December 2021 in Nanotechnology

Journal Article

Synthesis of stabilizer-free, homogeneous gold nanoparticles by cold atmospheric-pressure plasma jet and their optical sensing property

Le Thi Quynh Xuan

Linh Nhat Nguyen

Thuan Nguyen Dao

Recently, cold atmospheric-pressure plasma has been studied extensively as an efficient and green method to synthesize gold nanoparticles (AuNPs). Although the characteristics of the AuNPs, especially their homogeneousness, depend very much on the plasma synthesis parameters, there is a lack of a study involving these parameters systematically. Moreover, most of AuNPs-cold-plasma synthesis reports so far either required organic capping agents or resulted in highly non-uniform AuNPs. In this work, we systematically study the effect of most important synthesis parameters— including distance from the plasma jet to the solution, gas flow rate, plasma frequency, volume and concentration of the precursor, plasma interaction time as well as the effect of the synthesis environment (humidity and temperature)—on the uniformity of the AuNPs. Through various characterization measurements, we show that homogeneous and highly stable intrinsic AuNPs with an average size of 45 nm can be obtained with optimized synthesis parameters and in the absence of a stabilizer. The synthesized AuNPs yield advanced optical sensing properties in comparison with commercial AuNPs and can be further applied in developing versatile and high-sensitivity biosensors.

1 April 2021 in Scientific Reports

Journal Article

Photophysics of DFHBI bound to RNA aptamer Baby Spinach

Thuan Nguyen Dao

Reinhard Haselsberger

Mai Thu Khuc

Anh Tuân Phan

Alexander A. Voityuk

Maria-Elisabeth Michel-Beyerle

The discovery of the GFP-type dye DFHBI that becomes fluorescent upon binding to an RNA aptamer, termed Spinach, led to the development of a variety of fluorogenic RNA systems that enable genetic encoding of living cells. In view of increasing interest in small RNA aptamers and the scarcity of their photophysical characterisation, this paper is a model study on Baby Spinach, a truncated Spinach aptamer with half its sequence. Fluorescence and fluorescence excitation spectra of DFHBI complexes of Spinach and Baby Spinach are known to be similar. Surprisingly, a significant divergence between absorption and fluorescence excitation spectra of the DFHBI/RNA complex was observed on conditions of saturation at large excess of RNA over DFHBI. Since absorption spectra were not reported for any Spinach-type aptamer, this effect is new. Quantitative modelling of the absorption spectrum based on competing dark and fluorescent binding sites could explain it. However, following reasoning of fluorescence lifetimes of bound DFHBI, femtosecond-fluorescence lifetime profiles would be more supportive of the notion that the abnormal absorption spectrum is largely caused by trans-isomers formed within the cis-bound DFHBI/RNA complex. Independent of the origin, the unexpected discrepancy between absorption and fluorescence excitation spectra allows for easily accessed screening and insight into the efficiency of a fluorogenic dye/RNA system.

15 May 2024 in Materials Advances

Journal Article

Pencil-on-paper flexible DBD plasma for surface disinfection

Neha Kaushik

Thuan Nguyen Dao

Minh Thu Nguyen

Shweta B. Borkar

Hoang Tung Nguyen

Linh Nhat Nguyen

A flexible dielectric barrier discharge plasma device was constructed using a facile pencil-to-paper approach.

6 January 2021 in Communications in Physics

Journal Article

Removal of Rhodamine B Dye by Plasma Jet Oxidation Process

Quynh Xuan Thi Le

Hong Quan Tran

Thu Ha Trinh

Thuan Nguyen Dao

Recently, nonthermal atmospheric pressure plasma has been developed as a novel tool in removal of water pollutants. Rhodamine B dye, widely used in textiles and biology, is toxic to both humans and animals, hence removing residual Rhodamine B in solution is necessary. In this work, we have setup a cold plasma jet system and used it to effectively remove Rhodamine B in the solution. We have shown that the main oxidation substance responsible to remove Rhodamine B is the hydroxyl radical (•OH). By studying the effect of the hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) concentration in the initial and later was produced in the solution, the plasma power, and the Ar gas flow speed on the dye remove rate, we have identified 2 main reaction pathways to generate hydroxyl radical (•OH). Both of these reaction pathways involve high-energy electrons interacting with water and O2 in the solution and in the ambient air. Our work provides important information to understand the mechanism of dye removal by cold plasma treatment.

22 October 2024 in Nanomaterials

Journal Article

A Novel Method for Rapid and High-Performance SERS Substrate Fabrication by Combination of Cold Plasma and Laser Treatment

In this paper, we report a simple yet efficient method for rapid and high-performance SERS substrate fabrication by a combination of cold plasma and laser treatment. Our analysis reveals that cold plasma pre-treatment significantly reduced surface roughness, transforming 200 nm spikes into an almost perfectly uniform surface, while enhancing the substrate’s surface energy by lowering the water contact angle from 59° to 0°, all achieved within just 30 s of 0.9-mW plasma treatment, while 15-min green-laser treatment facilitated more uniform deposition of AuNPs across the entire treated area, effectively creating the SERS substrates. The combined treatments result in enhancement of the Raman intensity (11 times) and consistency over the whole area of the SERS substrates, and their reusability (up to 10 times). The fabricated SERS substrates exhibit a significant enhancement factor of approximately 3 × 10⁸ with R6G, allowing detection down to a concentration of 10⁻¹² M. We demonstrate the application of these SERS substrates by detecting amoxicillin—an antibiotic used worldwide to treat a diversity of bacterial infections—in a dynamic expanded linear range of seven orders (from 10⁻³ to 10⁻⁹ M) with high reliability (R² = 0.98), and a detection limit of 9 × 10⁻¹⁰ M. Our approach to high-performance SERS substrate fabrication holds potential for further expansion to other metallic NPs like Ag, or magnetic NPs (Fe₃O₄).

About Me

Dr. Dao Nguyen Thuan is a senior researcher at the Institute of Materials Science (IMS), Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (VAST), Hanoi. He earned a Ph.D. in Biophysics from Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore (2012), then spent five years at NTU’s Biofemto Lab working on ensemble and single-molecule spectroscopy. He joined IMS-VAST in 2017 to establish the Laboratory of Plasma Technology (LaPlaT) and was promoted to Head of the Laboratory in 2020. From 2022–2024, he worked at the PLASMANT group (University of Antwerp, Belgium) to design and build a novel plasma device for virus inactivation. Recently, he joined the Electron Microscopy – Cooperman Laboratory at IMS in 2026. His research focuses on sustainable technology development, translating cold plasma and photonic/light-based technologies to applications in materials processing and surface engineering, agriculture, healthcare, and environmental treatment. He also works on the synthesis, characterization, and application of nanomaterials, employing various spectroscopic and materials characterization techniques including UV–Vis absorption, fluorescence and Raman spectroscopy, DLS, SEM, TEM, FTIR, and XRD. He has authored more than 25 peer-reviewed articles (>650 citations as of Dec 2025). He has served as the reviewer of >20 journals including ACS Nano, Materials Today Physics, Microchemical Journal, Nanotechnology, Nanomaterials, Plasma, Coatings, Optics Communications, and others.

Dr. Thuan Nguyen Dao

Dr. Thuan Nguyen Dao

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