Metal clusters

Metal clusters have discrete electronic levels similar to molecules and are therefore capable of luminescence .

Fig. 1. Energy levels of metallic structures [Díez, I. & Ras, R. H. A. Fluorescent silver nanoclusters. Nanoscale 3, 1963 (2011)].

This leads to wide interest in them as new phosphors in medicine and biology. We study both the structure (Fig. 2) and photophysics (Fig. 3) of such luminescent metal complexes with biopolymers, and their use as biosensors.

Fig. 2. In silico structure of a DNA-stabilized green silver cluster (IL Volkov, ZV Reveguk, P. Yu. Serdobintsev, RR Ramazanov, AI Kononov. DNA as UV light – harvesting antenna, Nucleic Acids Res., 2018, 46 (7), 3543-3551. [DOI link] ).

Fig. 3. Excitation of the cluster complex with DNA by a light quantum leads to a rapid and significant change in the structure of the complex, which causes a significant Stokes shift of luminescence (Z. Reveguk, R. Lysenko, R. Ramazanov, A. Kononov, Ultrafast fluorescence dynamics of DNA-based silver clusters , Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2018,20, 28205-28210. [DOI link] ).