Growth of PbS nanoclusters on specific sites of programmed oligodeoxynucleotides

We develope a method to synthesize PbS nanoclusters (NCs) using guanine-containing oligodeoxynucleotides (ODNs) as templates. The NCs on the ODNs are ultra small (ranging from ～ 0.5 nm to 2.1 nm) and luminescent in the visible region. They are characterized by photoluminescence (PL) spectra, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and X-ray powder diffraction (XRD). The ODN-NC complexes can be used as customer-designed fluorophores which do not have the problem of multiple conjugations. The same method enables us to fabricate PbS quantum dot molecules and connect them into nanowires, expanding their potential applications in molecule electronics and quantum computing.