Doped semiconductor nanocrystals synthesis

Doped Semiconductor Nanocrystals Synthesis, Characterization, Physical Properties, and Applications... 

Chapter 2 Doped Semiconductor Nanocrystals Synthesis, Characterization, Physical Properties, and Applications 47 J. Daniel Bryan and Daniel R. Gamelin... 

The body of work presented in this chapter has focused largely on the synthesis of colloidal doped semiconductor nanocrystals, and on the application of a wide variety of characterization techniques to ensure dopant incorporation into the host semiconductor lattice. Although still relatively rare, the high-quality... 

The most prominent nanomaterials for bioanalysis at present are semiconductor QDs. Rare-earth doped upconverting nanocrystals and precious metal nanoparticles are becoming increasingly popular, yet they are still far from reaching the level of use of QDs. Other luminescent nanoparticles like carbon-based nanoparticles start to appear, but the synthesis and application of these materials are still in their infancy and not significant for practitioners in the field of bioanalysis. 

Quantum dots represent three-dimensional confinement in semiconductor materials. The optical spectroscopy of lanthanides-doped III-V semiconductor QDs has been observed to be very different from the bulk or thick film. For example, carrier confinement in QDs can strongly enhance the radiative quantum efficiency of the lanthanide emission, which thus makes lanthanide-doped III-V semiconductor QDs very promising candidates for full-color LEDs. It is notoriously difficult to dope lanthanide into III-V semiconductor nanocrystals by wet chemical synthesis methods. To date, most of these samples were prepared either by MBE, ion implantation or magnetron co-sputtering. 

The other interesting challenge from a synthetic viewpoint is the synthesis of doped QDs, particularly to study their magneto-optical properties. Doping transition metal ions in bulk as well as nanoscale semi-conductors has been an important area of study for the past couple of decades. Recent studies have further shown that for several applications, dopant associated emission from semiconductor nanocrystals may be more advantageous than the usual band-edge emission. Extensive attempts have been made to dope intentional impurities in various semiconductor nanocrystals, including those in ZnSe, ... 

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