Speaker
Description
DNA-templated silver nanoclusters have fascinating properties, including high absorption cross section and high fluorescence quantum yield. Importantly, these and other features can be readily tuned by changing the DNA sequence of strands, which stabilize the silver cluster inside. The combination of desirable properties and tunability makes them potentially suitable for a wide range of applications from biosensing to nanophotonics. We used two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy to investigate photo-induced dynamics in a few DNA-templated silver nanoclusters [1,2]. Rather surprisingly, some clusters feature similar behaviour, whereas others different, but in all of them we follow sub-100 fs energy relaxation between the absorbing and emitting states. We discuss electronic structure, nature of the observed transitions, as well as exceptional coherence and relaxation dynamics in these systems.
References
1. E. Thyrhaug et al. Ultrafast coherence transfer in DNA-templated silver nanoclusters. Nat. Commun., 8, 15577 (2017).
2. J. Chen et al. Excited-state dynamics in a DNA-stabilized Ag16 cluster with Near-Infrared emission. J. Phys. Chem. Lett., 14, 4078-4083 (2023).
