Synthesis of spiny metal–phenolic coordination crystals as a sensing platform for sequence-specific detection of nucleic acids

Abstract

Spiny metal–phenolic coordination crystals are synthesized using a nontoxic plant polyphenol as a ligand. Due to the abundance of metal species and sp²-hybridized carbon atoms on their spiny surface, such coordination crystals can adsorb DNA probes and quench the fluorescence, resulting in a high efficiency for nucleic acid assay.