“…In 2013, a new aqueous synthetic approach based on one-pot synthesis of fluorescent Si NPs, using of (3-aminopropyl)trimethoxysilane (APTMS) as the silicon source and trisodium citrate dihydrate (Na 3 Cit), was reported by Zhong et al This work has attracted a great deal of attention from the scientific community since 2013 and has accumulated 227 citations according to Google Scholar (June 6, 2019), 203 citations according to Scopus (May 18, 2019), and 191 citations according to SciFinder (June 6, 2019). Among all these papers, special attention should be paid to those that specifically mention use of the approach described in this paper for the basis of or jumping off point for their own work. − At first inspection, the proposed technique seems to have many advantages in comparison with most other approaches reported earlier. Of these advantages, one can emphasize in particular the following: (i) water is used as a solvent, (ii) short reaction times are sufficient (15 min), (iii) low temperatures are needed (160 °C), and (iv) inexpensive precursors work well.…”