A one-pot aqueous synthesis of high-luminescent thiol-capped CdTe and its bioapplication

Our study described a synthesis of thiol-capped high-luminescent (quantum yield as high as 80%) CdTe quantum dots (QDs) with a facile method in aqueous phase. The fluorescence of the as-prepared CdTe QDs could be tuned from 500 nm to 650 nm. More importantly, after beta-actin conjugation, the CdTe QDs were successfully conjugated with live cells to observe their configurations, demonstrating their potentially broad application as biolabels. The crystal structure, morphology and optical property of the products were investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) and fluorescence spectrophotometer.