Issue 105, 2014

Recent advances in the synthesis, characterization, and biomedical applications of ultrasmall thiolated silver nanoclusters

Abstract

With ultrasmall particle sizes of ∼1 nm, thiolate-protected silver nanoclusters (or thiolated Ag NCs) have recently emerged as an attractive frontier of nanoparticle research because of their unique molecular-like properties, such as well-defined molecular structures, HOMO–LUMO transitions, quantized charging, and strong luminescence. Such intriguing physicochemical properties have made thiolated Ag NCs a new class of promising theranostic agents for a wide spectrum of biomedical applications, such as bioimaging, antimicrobial agents, and disease diagnostics and therapy. In turn, the promising applications of thiolated Ag NCs have also fuelled the cluster community to develop more efficient strategies to synthesize high-quality Ag NCs with well-defined size, structure, and surface. In this review article, we first survey recent advances in developing efficient synthetic strategies for thiolated Ag NCs, highlighting the underlying chemistry that makes the delicate control of their sizes and surfaces possible. In the second section, we discuss recent advances in characterization techniques for ultrasmall thiolated Ag NCs, including their physical, chemical, and biological properties. The emerging characterization techniques are central to the development of cluster chemistry. In the last section, we highlight some examples demonstrating the vast possibilities of thiolated Ag NCs for biomedical applications. We conclude this review article by pointing out some challenging issues related to thiolated Ag NCs, and hopefully these can encourage more concerted efforts on their study from the research communities of cluster chemistry, noble metal chemistry, biology, biomedicine, etc.

Graphical abstract: Recent advances in the synthesis, characterization, and biomedical applications of ultrasmall thiolated silver nanoclusters

Article information

Article type
Review Article
Submitted
09 okt 2014
Accepted
28 okt 2014
First published
29 okt 2014

RSC Adv., 2014,4, 60581-60596

Recent advances in the synthesis, characterization, and biomedical applications of ultrasmall thiolated silver nanoclusters

K. Zheng, X. Yuan, N. Goswami, Q. Zhang and J. Xie, RSC Adv., 2014, 4, 60581 DOI: 10.1039/C4RA12054J

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements