• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.53 no.5
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• pp.505-511
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• 2009

Water soluble ZnS nanocrystals were synthesized by capping the surface of the nanocrystals with valine and alanine molecules, which are structurally simple and bio friendly amino acids. The obtained ZnS nanocrystal powders were characterized by XRD, HR-TEM, and EDXS spectroscopies. The measured particle sizes by HR-TEM images were in the range of 3.3 to 3.6 nm. In addition, the surface capping amino acids molecules were characterized by FT-IR and FT-Raman spectroscopies.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.1169-1176
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• 2014

In this study, water-dispersible ZnS:Mn nanocrystals were synthesized by capping the surface with conventional and simple structured amino acid ligands: $\small{L}$-Glycine and $\small{L}$-Alanine. The ZnS:Mn-Gly and ZnS:Mn-Ala nanocrystal powders were characterized by XRD, HR-TEM, EDXS, ICP-AES, and FT-IR spectroscopy. The optical properties were measured by UV-Visible and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. The PL spectra for the ZnS:Mn-Gly and ZnS:Mn-Ala showed broad emission peaks at 599 nm and 607 nm with PL efficiencies of 6.5% and 7.8%, respectively. The measured average particle size from the HR-TEM images were $6.4{\pm}0.8$ nm (ZnS:Mn-Gly) and $4.1{\pm}0.5$ nm (ZnS:Mn-Ala), which were also supported by Debye-Scherrer calculations. In addition, the degree of aggregation of the nanocrystals in aqueous solutions were measured by a hydrodynamic light scattering method, which showed formation of sub-micrometer size aggregates for both ZnS:Mn-Gly ($273{\pm}94$ nm) and ZnS:Mn-Ala ($233{\pm}34$ nm) in water due to the intermolecular attraction between the capping amino acids molecules. Finally, the cytotoxic effects of ZnS:Mn-Gly and ZnS:Mn-Ala nanocrsystals over the growth of wild type E. coli were investigated. As a result, no toxicity was shown for the ZnS:Mn-Gly nanocrystal in the colloidal concentration region from 1 ${\mu}g/mL$ to 1000 ${\mu}g/mL$, while ZnS:Mn-Ala showed significant toxicity at 100 ${\mu}g/mL$.