Micro-Photoluminescence Study of Bio-conjugated CdSe/ZnS Nanocrystals

The effect of bio-conjugation of CdSe/ZnS core-shell quantum dots (QDs) with Interleukin 10 (IL-10) antibodies on the aging of photoluminescence (PL) spectra of the QDs was investigated. The aging occurred upon storage of QDs for about 2 years or thermal annealing at 190 oC for up to 12 hours at atmospheric ambience and consisted in “blue” shifting the PL band position, increasing a PL band half-width and decreasing the PL intensity. The bio-conjugation is found to promote PL aging. The aging upon storage is attributed to the oxidation that decreases the QD core dimension, while the aging upon thermal annealing can be due to both oxidation and alloying of CdSe core and ZnS shell.