Growth of Pb S nanoclusters on specific sites of programmed oligodeoxynucleotides

We develope a method to synthesize Pb S 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 Pb S quantum dot molecules and connect them into nanowires, expanding their potential applications in molecule electronics and quantum computing.