Water-soluble luminescent CdS quantum dots (QDs) capped by polyphosphate, l-cysteine, and thioglycerol were synthesized in aqueous solution. The ligands were found to have a profound effect on the luminesence response of CdS QDs to physiologically important metal cations. Polyphosphate-capped CdS QDs were sensitive to nearly all mono- and divalent cations, showing no ion selectivity. Conversely, thioglycerol-capped CdS QDs were sensitive to only copper and iron ions. Similar concentrations of physiologically relevant cations, such as zinc, sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium ions did not affect the luminescence of thioglycerol-capped CdS QDs. On the other hand, l-cysteine-capped CdS QDs were sensitive to zinc ions and insensitive to other physiologically important cations, such as copper, calcium, and magnium ions. To demonstrate the detection capability of these new ion probes, l-cysteine and thioglycerol-capped CdS QDs were used to detect zinc and copper ions in physiological buffer samples. The d...

Luminescent CdS quantum dots as selective ion probes.

This review captures the synthesis, assembly, properties, and applications of copper chalcogenide NCs, which have achieved significant research interest in the last decade due to their compositional and structural versatility. The outstanding functional properties of these materials stems from the relationship between their band structure and defect concentration, including charge carrier concentration and electronic conductivity character, which consequently affects their optoelectronic, optical, and plasmonic properties. This, combined with several metastable crystal phases and stoichiometries and the low energy of formation of defects, makes the reproducible synthesis of these materials, with tunable parameters, remarkable. Further to this, the review captures the progress of the hierarchical assembly of these NCs, which bridges the link between their discrete and collective properties. Their ubiquitous application set has cross-cut energy conversion (photovoltaics, photocatalysis, thermoelectrics), en...

Compound Copper Chalcogenide Nanocrystals

Quantum dots (QDs) have received great interest for diverse applications due to their distinct advantages, such as narrow and symmetric emission with tunable colors, broad and strong absorption, reasonable stability, and solution processibility Doped QDs not only potentially retain almost all of the above advantages, but also avoid the self-quenching problem due to their substantial ensemble Stokes shift Two obvious advantages of doped QDs, especially doped ZnS QDs, over typical CdSe@ZnS and CdTe QDs are longer dopant emission lifetime and potentially lower cytotoxicity The lifetime of dopant emission from transition-metal ion or lanthanide ion-doped QDs is generally longer than that of the bandgap or defect-related emission of host, and that of biological background fluorescence, providing great opportunities to eliminate background fluorescence for biosensing and bioimaging For bioimaging applications, fluorescent dopants may mitigate toxicity problems by producing visible or infrared emission in nanocrystals made from less-harmful elements than those currently used In this review, recent advances in utilizing doped QDs for chemo/biosensing and bioimaging are discussed, and the synthetic routes and optical properties of doped QDs that make them excellent probes for various strategies in chemo/biosensing and bioimaging are highlighted Moreover, perspectives on future exploration of doped QDs for chemo/biosensing and bioimaging are also given

Doped quantum dots for chemo/biosensing and bioimaging

The combination of nanomaterials as solid supports and supramolecular concepts has led to the development of hybrid materials with improved functionalities. These "hetero-supramolecular" ideas provide a means of bridging the gap between molecular chemistry, materials sciences, and nanotechnology. In recent years, relevant examples have been reported on functional aspects, such as enhanced recognition and sensing by using molecules on preorganized surfaces, the reversible building of nanometer-sized networks and 3D architectures, as well as biomimetic and gated chemistry in hybrid nanomaterials for the development of advanced functional protocols in three-dimensional frameworks. This approach allows the fine-tuning of the properties of nanomaterials and offers new perspectives for the application of supramolecular concepts.

The supramolecular chemistry of organic-inorganic hybrid materials.

Semiconductor nanocrystals, known as “quantum dots” (QDs), have demonstrated several remarkable, attractive optoelectronic characteristics especially suited to analytical applications in the (bio)chemical field. We review progress in exploiting the attractive luminescent properties of QDs in designing novel probes for chemical and biochemical optical sensing.

The use of luminescent quantum dots for optical sensing

Nonstoichiometric cadmium sulfide nanoparticles ([Cd2+]/[S2-] = 3) in 2-propanol were surface-modified with Cu2+ ions. Addition of copper(II) perchlorate to CdS nanoparticles leads to binding of copper ions onto the surface of the semiconductor, accompanied by rapid reduction of Cu2+ to Cu+, as confirmed by EPR and absorption spectra. Copper(II) perchlorate also quenches the recombination luminescence of CdS nanoparticles effectively. The quenching data obey a static interaction model, which confirms the binding of copper ions onto CdS. The latter was confirmed also by ultrafiltration and ICP spectroscopy. Copper ions bound onto the surface of CdS lead to formation of a new, red-shifted, luminescence band. The maximum of the new band is at 14 700 cm-1 compared to that of the original band at 17 900 cm-1. It is suggested that, at low copper ion concentrations, copper ions bound onto the surface of CdS nanoparticles exist as isolated Cu+ ions. They create a new energy level in the bandgap at about 1.2 eV be...

Alex V. Isarov and

Papers

Optical and Photochemical Properties of Nonstoichiometric Cadmium Sulfide Nanoparticles: Surface Modification with Copper(II) Ions