Facile, large scale synthesis of water soluble AgInSe2/ZnSe quantum dots and its cell viability assessment on different cell lines

I-III-VI chalcopyrite ternary quantum dots have emerged as a good alternative over the conventional II-VI and IV-VI chalcogenide binary QDs that usually consist of heavy metals such as Cd and Pb which has limited their bioapplications. Among the chalcopyrite QDs, AgInSe2 QDs has been the least developed due to the imbalanced cation reactivity, unwanted impurities, broad size distribution and resultant large particle sizes. In addition, the cell viability of these QDs still needs to be investigated on different cell lines both normal and cancerous ones. Herein, large-scale synthesis of water-soluble thioglycolic acid (TGA) capped and gelatin-stabilized AgInSe2 (AISe) core and AgInSe2/ZnSe (AISe/ZnSe) core/shell QDs in the absence of an inert atmosphere and their cell viability against different cell lines are reported. The optical and structural characteristics of the as-synthesized QDs were investigated by UV visible (vis) absorption, photoluminescence (PL) and Fourier-transmission infrared (FTIR) spectroscopies, dynamic light scattering (DLS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and high-resolution transmission electron microscope (HRTEM) techniques. Growth of ZnSe shell on the core AISe resulted in the blue shifting of the emission maximum position with the increased PL intensity. The QDs are small and spherical in shape with an average particle diameter of 2.8 nm and 3.2 nm for AISe and AISe/ZnSe QDs respectively. The in vitro cell viability assay revealed that the as-synthesized AISe/ZnSe QDs are not toxic towards cancerous (HeLa -cervical cancer and A549-lung cancer) and normal (BHK21 -Kidney) cell lines.