General Avenue to Multifunctional Aqueous Nanocrystals Stabilized by Hyperbranched Polyglycerol

Abstract

A general strategy to synthesize multifunctional aqueous nanocrystals is presented and demonstrated in this paper. Using multihydroxy hyperbranched polyglycerol (HPG) with high molecular weight (>20 KDa) as a stabilizer, a variety of nanocrystals (e.g., monometallic, alloy of noble metal, semiconductor, magnetic, rare-earth, and silver halide nanocrystals) are readily and rapidly synthesized at room temperature in water or N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) with high yield (>90%). The resulting HPG-stabilized nanocrystals show uniform and small sizes, good solubility in water and polar organic solvents (e.g., DMF, methanol, ethylene glycol (EG), and ethanol), favorable biocompatibility, excellent stability, and multihydroxyl groups. The surface hydroxyl groups of nanocrystals can be further tailored with various functional molecules (e.g., amino acids). Our methodology paves the way for fast, facile, and large-scale fabrication of multifunctional aqueous nanocrystals, opening up enormous opportunities to use the nanocrystals for many technological applications.