Self - assembly of HgTe nanoparticles into nanostars using single stranded DNA

Self-assembly of structurally tunned nearly monodispersed HgTe ssDNA nanostars of average size 1.4 nm have been achieved by manipulating HgTe nanoparticles using single stranded (ss) DNA under galvanostatic condition. The nanostars are linked with one another by ssDNA of length 0.35 nm. Whereas, HgTe nanoparticles without ssDNA complexation show a polycrystalline character with size in the range 4 7 nm. Room temperature photoluminescence (PL) of HgTe ssDNA nanostars have yielded a single narrow PL at 548.4 nm of width 8 nm that corroborates to the nearly monodispersity of the nanostars and predicts the lateral exciton transfer. On the other hand, polydispersed HgTe nanoparticles exhibit freeand boundexciton dominated luminescence in their PL spectrum. Self-assembly of semiconductor particles and clusters in the nanoscale has become increasingly important in nanoscale science and technology for their novel properties derived from their size quantization1–4 and surface effects. Assembly of these nanostructures by conventional technique have yielded polydispersity and have encountered difficulties ∗Corresponding author E-mail:[email protected]