AER/Inorganic Seminar – Arthur Wiesender

About the event

Speaker: Arthur Wiesender

Group: Dr. Kevin Kittilstved

Title: Cation Exchange in II-VI Semiconductor Nanocrystals

Abstract

The semiconductor industry has revolutionized modern society through the ability to control the placement of dopants in the lattice. Semiconductors composed of group 12 cations and group 16 anions are referred to as II-VI semiconductors. Research of these II-VI semiconductors as nanomaterials has led to their use in many applications including electronics, photovoltaic cells, solid-state lighting, medicine, and quantum information systems. The majority of the research on nanocrystalline semiconductors grown by colloidal methods has led to breakthroughs in our understanding of their unique size-dependent optical and electronic properties; however, our chemical understanding of how to control the introduction of dopants to impart additional functionality has received much less attention. For nanomaterials to have practical use in technology, where consistency and reproducibility are imperative, control must be taken over the distribution and concentration of dopants in their structure. Cation exchange is a common post-synthetic strategy for introducing dopants into the nanocrystal lattice. This literature review will explore the proposed cation exchange methods for doping with transition metals of different II-VI clusters and nanostructures with varying sizes.