Abstract

We describe the design of high affinity metal-coordinating ligands for the effective coating of inorganic nanocrystals. The ligand design exploits the advantages of the nucleophilic addition reaction to introduce several metal-anchors, hydrophilic moieties and specific reactive groups along a poly(isobutylene-alt-maleic anhydride) short chain. Cap exchange with these ligands applied to luminescent quantum dots (QDs) yields homogeneous nanocrystal dispersions that exhibit long term colloidal stability over several biologically-relevant conditions. The introduction of a controllable number of reactive groups allows conjugation of the QDs to biomolecules via bio-orthogonal coupling chemistries including self-assembly of biotinylated QDs with streptavidin-dye, and coupling of azide-functionalized QDs to cyclooctyne-modified transferrin via copper-free click chemistry.

© 2017 Optical Society of America