Copper Selenide Nanosnakes: Bovine Serum Albumin-Assisted Room Temperature Controllable Synthesis and Characterization

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Abstract
Herein we firstly reported a simple, environment-friendly, controllable synthetic method of CuSe nanosnakes at room temperature using copper salts and sodium selenosulfate as the reactants, and bovine serum albumin (BSA) as foaming agent. As the amounts of selenide ions (Se2−) released from Na2SeSO3 in the solution increased, the cubic and snake-like CuSe nanostructures were formed gradually, the cubic nanostructures were captured by the CuSe nanosnakes, the CuSe nanosnakes grew wider and longer as the reaction time increased. Finally, the cubic CuSe nanostructures were completely replaced by BSA–CuSe nanosnakes. The prepared BSA–CuSe nanosnakes exhibited enhanced biocompatibility than the CuSe nanocrystals, which highly suggest that as-prepared BSA–CuSe nanosnakes have great potentials in applications such as biomedical engineering.