Silver nanoclusters stabilized by 5′-CCCGGAGAAG-3′ DNA strands display an unusually high fluorescence quantum yield in the near-infrared region.

Photophysical characterization of two DNA-AgNCs emitting in the 800–900 nm range and the observation of microsecond luminescence.

The plastic pollution has become one of the top environmental concerns. Substantial effort has been devoted into recycling waste plastic materials in a facile and economical way. In this work, we have successfully recycled a common type of plastic waste, i.e., polystyrene (PS), into value-added functional materials through a cost-effective and facile dip-coating method. The resulted mixture of waste PS and SiO₂, referred to as PS/SiO₂, coated textile material is superhydrophobic and superoleophilic, showing an excellent resistance towards corrosive solutions (acid, alkaline, and saline), high temperature treatment, and mechanical abrasion. As a proof-of-concept application, the PS/SiO₂-coated textile is used to selectively separate oil/water mixtures through either absorption or filtration method. It also exhibits a surface self-cleaning property, which may be used as fabrics for dust-preventing cloths. Our work offers a new strategy to treat the waste for preparation of novel low-cost superhydrophobic materials for various applications.

The combination of mass spectrometry and single crystal X‐ray diffraction of HPLC‐purified DNA‐stabilized silver nanoclusters (DNA‐AgNCs) is a powerful tool to determine the charge and structure of the encapsulated AgNC. Such information is not only relevant to design new DNA‐AgNCs with tailored properties, but it is also important for bio‐conjugation experiments and is essential for electronic structure calculations. Here, the efforts to determine the structure of a HPLC‐purified green emissive DNA‐AgNC are presented. Unfortunately, the original DNA‐AgNC, known to have four valence electrons, could not be crystallized. By modifying the stabilizing DNA sequence, while maintaining the original spectroscopic properties, several mutants could be successfully crystallized, and for one of them, single crystal X‐ray diffraction data provided insight into the silver positions. While the DNA conformation is not resolved, the described approach provides valuable insight into the class of green and dual emissive DNA‐AgNCs with four valence electrons. These results constitute a roadmap on how to improve crystallization and crystal quality for X‐ray diffraction measurements.