The strong interaction between metal ions and DNA inspires the production of the single-stranded DNA (ssDNA)-stabilized luminescent silver nanodots that are prepared by reducing a mixture of silver ions and ssDNA. Alternatively, luminescent silver clusters can be transferred from polymer-based protection groups to the ssDNA, resulting in stable luminescent silver nanodots. However, it is not clear what factors determine the interactions between the silver cluster and ssDNA during the transfer. We compared the generation of silver nanodots by direct chemical reduction and silver cluster transfer. We found that the transfer process is sensitive to environments and can be tuned to generate versatile silver nanodots. Since the ionic strength play an important role in determining the conformation of the ssDNA, the ionic strength, but not the type of the buffer anions, affects the spectral range of the transferred silver nanodots. Other factors such temperature and pH of the transferring solution also contribute to the type of silver nanodot generated. Compared to the direct generation of fluorophores, the transfer strategy also shows great advantages with respect to the fluorogenic spectral range and the speed of fluorophore generation.

Transferring silver clusters to DNA sequence

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