Individual Water-Soluble Dendrimer-Encapsulated Silver Nanodot Fluorescence

Abstract

Easily observed on the single molecule level, highly fluorescent and photostable silver nanoclusters have been photochemically prepared within poly(amidoamine) dendrimer hosts in aqueous solutions. The dendrimer cage stabilizes and solubilizes the nanoclusters to yield highly stable, photoactivated single nanodots ranging in size from 2 to 8 silver atoms. These multicolored, highly fluorescent species are extremely photostable and readily observed on the single molecule scale with weak mercury lamp excitation. Such easily created, bright, photoactivated water-soluble fluorophores are likely to greatly expand the impact of single molecule labeling studies in a wide variety of systems.

DNA-stabilized, fluorescent, metal nanoclusters for biosensor development

“…Before the seminal work in 2002 by Zheng and Dickson who used dendrimers as a stabilizer [12], metal NCs were only prepared in cryogenic noble gases or in solid zeolites [30][31][32]. Following this initial discovery, the Dickson group further showed that cytosine (C)-rich DNA can also stabilize fluorescent AgNCs [15], which represents the first connection between metal NCs and DNA.…”

“…However, they started to attract extensive interest of analytical chemists only in the past decade due to advancement in their solution phase synthesis. Since the pioneering work from the Dickson group, NCs can now be routinely prepared in aqueous solutions with a number of polymeric or thiol templates including dendrimers [12,13], proteins [14], DNA [15], and GSH [16]. This review is focused on DNA-templated NCs.…”

Virus trafficking – learning from single-virus tracking

“…Quantum dots are much brighter and more robust than fluorescent dyes and proteins, but their bulky size places severe limits on their application. Research is underway to reduce the size of quantum dots (M. Bawendi, A. Ting and S. Weiss, personal communication) and to synthesize other small inorganic probes 12 .…”

A facile one-pot synthesis of blue and red luminescent thiol stabilized gold nanoclusters: a thorough optical and microscopy study

“…11 Following this seminal work, various methods have been developed so far to synthesize monodisperse gold nanocluster of definite particle sizes by controlling the initial reaction conditions such as the thiol-to-gold ion ratio, reducing agents, temperature and also by modifying the post-synthesis purification processes. Several well defined nanoclusters have been synthesized so far such as Au 20 (SR) 16 , Au 25 (SR) 18 , Au 38 (SR) 24 , Au 102 (SR) 44 , and Au 144 (SR) 60 . [12][13][14][15][16][17] Among all these thiolate protected gold nanocluster, Au 25 (SR) 18 and Au 144 (SR) 60 are most widely studied due to their higher stability in comparison to other thiolated gold nanocluster.…”