Highly Luminescent, Stable, and Water-Soluble CdSe/CdS Core−Shell Dendron Nanocrystals with Carboxylate Anchoring Groups

A dendron ligand with two carboxylate anchoring groups at its focal point and eight hydroxyl groups as its terminal groups was found to efficiently convert as-synthesized CdSe/CdS core−shell nanocrystals in toluene to water-soluble dendron-ligand stabilized nanocrystals (dendron nanocrystals). The resulting dendron nanocrystals retained 60% of the photoluminescence value of the original CdSe/CdS core−shell nanocrystals in toluene and were significantly brighter than the similar dendron nanocrystals with thiolate (deprotonated thiol group) as the anchoring group which retained just 10% of the photoluminescence value of the original CdSe/CdS core−shell nanocrystals in toluene. The carboxylate-based dendron nanocrystals survived UV irradiation in air for at least 13 days, about 9 times better than the thiolate-based dendron nanocrystals (35 h) and similar to that of the thiolate-based dendron-box stabilized CdSe/CdS core−shell nanocrystals (box nanocrystals). Upon UV irradiation, the dendron nanocrystals bec...