12 years after the introduction of DNA-templated silver nanoclusters (DNA-AgNCs), exciting progress has been made and yet we are still in the midst of trying to fully understand this nanomaterial. The prominent excellence of DNA-AgNCs is undoubtedly its modulatable emission property, of which how variation in DNA templates causes emission tuning remains elusive. Based on the up-to-date DNA-AgNCs, we aim to establish the correlation between the structure/sequence of DNA templates and emission behaviour of AgNCs. Herein, we systematically present a wide-range of DNA-AgNCs based on the structural complexity of the DNA templates, including single-stranded DNA (ssDNA), double-stranded DNA (dsDNA), triple-stranded DNA (tsDNA) and DNA nanostructures. For each DNA category, we discuss the emission property, quantum yield and synthesis condition of the respective AgNCs, before cross-comparing the impact of different DNA scaffolds on the properties of AgNCs. A future outlook for this area is given as a conclusion. By putting the information together, this review may shed new light on understanding DNA-AgNCs while we are expecting continuous breakthroughs in this field.

A plasmonic metasurface composed of homogeneously self-assembled gold nanoparticles can provide high-contrast fluorescence images confined to the nanointerface. In this study, we successfully demonstrated real-time, high-spatiotemporal-resolution imaging of adhered Venus-paxillin-3T3 live cells under a widefield microscope, where not only a high axial resolution but also a high lateral resolution down to the theoretical limit were confirmed through nascent cluster formation of paxillin. The improved lateral resolution on the sheet could be interpreted as the characteristic of localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR)mediated enhanced fluorescence and the metasurface acting as a nanothickness plane light emitter. We also found minimized photobleaching, owing to the increase in the emission efficiency via plasmon-exciton coupling. This simple nanomaterial-based technique will be a powerful tool to enhance interfacial signals and improve the quality of live-cell images, not only under widefield microscopes but also in combination with various super-resolution microscope systems in the future.

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The ORCID identification number(s) for the author(s) of this article can be found under https://doi.org/10.1002/anbr.202100100.