In this work, it has been demonstrated that the co-ordinating tri-n-octylphosphine and oleic acid mixture plays an essential role in the control of the growth, size distribution, colloidal stability, crystallinity and shape of the resulting PbSe nanocrystals. A systematic combination of the reaction and growth conditions allows the possibility to produce high quality PbSe nanocrystals over a broad range of diameters with narrow size distributions without any size selective precipitation techniques being applied. The capping agent/ligands helps to control the grain growth of the nanocrystals during its formation and increases the dispersibility of the nanocrystals, which can easily be manipulated and used for various applications in optoelectronics and microscopy. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.