TY - JOUR AU - Zhao, Min AU - Chen, Qingyuan AU - Zhu, Yongcheng AU - Liu, Yuehui AU - Zhang, Chunchun AU - Jiang, Gang AU - Zhang, Meng AU - Yu, Kui PY - 2022 TI - Precursor compound enabled formation of aqueous-phase CdSe magic-size clusters at room temperature JO - Nano Research SN - 1998-0124 SP - 2634 EP - 2642 VL - 15 IS - 3 AB - The formation pathway of aqueous-phase colloidal semiconductor magic-size clusters (MSCs) remains unrevealed. In the present work, we demonstrate, for the first time, a precursor compound (PC)-enabled formation pathway of aqueous-phase CdSe MSCs exhibiting a sharp absorption peaking at about 420 nm (MSC-420). The CdSe MSC-420 is synthesized with CdCl2 and selenourea as the respective Cd and Se sources, and with 3-mercaptopropionic acid or L-cysteine as a ligand. Absorption featureless CdSe PCs form first in the aqueous reaction batches, which transform to MSC-420 in the presence of primary amines. The coordination between primary amine and Cd2+ on PCs may be responsible to the PC-to-MSC transformation. Upon increasing the reactant concentrations or decreasing the CdCl2-ligand feed molar ratios, the Cd precursor self-assembles into large aggregates, which may encapsulate the resulting CdSe PCs and inhibit their transformation to MSC-420. The present study sheds essential light on the syntheses and formation mechanisms of nanocrystals. UR - https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3858-1 DO - 10.1007/s12274-021-3858-1