Among semiconductor quantum dots, silicon nanocrystals (SiNCs) are gaining interest due to their high biocompatibility and natural abundance of silicon. The optical properties make SiNCs optimal candidates for luminescent bioprobes:(i) emission energy tuneable to the red and NIR spectral region, compatible with the biological window;(ii) high photoluminescence quantum yield;(iii) no sensitivity to molecular oxygen, despite the long lifetime of emission;(iv) long-lived luminescence that enables time-gated detection in the hundreds of μs timescale, which allows removal of scattered excitation light and autofluorescence of the biological sample with a low-cost equipment (gating times of the order of hundreds of μs). SiNCs can be passivated through covalent bond formation between Si and C atoms giving extremely robust systems. The two major issues for SiNCs are the poor absorption outside the UV spectral …