Supersaturation was found to play a pivotal role during nanoparticle-synthesis and its subtle variation helped achieve two prime objectives: (a) high photoluminescence quantum efficiency (PLQF) and 1 for post-preparative treatments. Degree of b) narrow size distribution, thereby obviating the need supersaturation of initial synthetic mixture was varied by changing the concentration of reagents while keeping their molar ratio constant at 1:2.5:0.5 for [Cd2+]:[cysteine]:[chalcogenide]. An eight-fold increase ill supersaturation caused a sharp focusing of size distribution by 64% for US quantum dots (QDs). The as-prepared CdS and CdTe QDs were found to have size distribution as low as 4% at higher supersaturation. For a four-fold increase in supersaturation, PLQE of as-prepared CdTe QDs (4.3 nm) rose by 5 times to a remarkably high value of 54%. The focusing of size distribution with increasing supersaturation was found to work well even in the absence of any stabilizer. A substantial overlap of nucleation and growth was found at low supersaturation (0.5S(CdTe)), whereas a good separation of the two events is achieved at a higher supersaturation (4S(CdTe)). This study provides a simplified aqueous route for producing highly monodisperse, photoluminescent and biocompatible nanoparticles. (c) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.