Evidence is provided from studies on natural and artificial biofluids that the sequestration of amorphous calcium phosphate by peptides or proteins to form nanocluster complexes is of general importance in the control of physiological calcification. A naturally occurring mixture of osteopontin peptides was shown, by light and neutron scattering, to form calcium phosphate nanoclusters with a cor...

Plasmonic nanoclusters, an ordered assembly of coupled metallic nanoparticles, support unique spectral features known as Fano resonances due to the coupling between their subradiant and superradiant plasmon modes. Within the Fano resonance, absorption is significantly enhanced, giving rise to highly localized, intense near fields with the potential to enhance nonlinear optical processes. Here, ...

The structure effect is widely present in the catalysis of alloy systems. However, the surface structure of this system is still ambiguous because of the limitations of the current surface characterization tools. We reported the x-ray crystallographic structure of the first and the largest AgAu alloy nanocluster with a doping shell formulated as [Ag46Au24(SR)32](BPh4)2. This nanocluster consist...

Organic ligand-protected metal nanoclusters have attracted extensively attention owing to their atomically precise composition, determined atom-packing structure and the fascinating properties and promising applications. To date, most research has been focused on thiol-stabilized gold and silver nanoclusters and their single crystal structures. Here the single crystal copper nanocluster species...

Stem-cell-based therapies have attracted considerable interest in regenerative medicine and oncological research. However, a major limitation of systemic delivery of stem cells is the low homing efficiency to the target site. Here, we report a serendipitous finding that various iron-based magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) actively augment chemokine receptor CXCR4 expression of bone-marrow-derived m...

In this research, the interaction of pyrimidine molecule with pristine B12N12 nanocluster is studied in different phases to understand the effect of environment on the electronic properties of the designated adsorption complexes. To this end, the pyrimidine adsorption over B12N12 in the gas phase and water medium is investigated using density functional theory (DFT) at the B97D/6-31+G(d,p) leve...

By fluorescence enhancement of a proximity-dependent DNA-scaffolded silver nanocluster probe pair and exonuclease III-mediated signal amplification, we present a new fluorescence turn-on mode and its application for specific DNA detection.

A density tunable dendrimeric array was designed for assembly of a gold nanocluster probe, which was unloaded by its chemoselective recognition to cell surface sialic acid for in situ tracing of sialic acid density.

The synthesis and characterisation of a hybrid supertetrahedral nanocluster, [Ga10S16(NC7H9)(4)](2-), in which the terminal S(2-) anions have been replaced by covalently bonded amine molecules, is described.