Evolution of local structural motifs in colloidal quantum dot semiconductor nanocrystals leading to nanofaceting

Hou, Bo ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9918-8223, Mocanu, Felix Cosmin, Cho, Yuljae, Lim, Jongchul, Feng, Jiangtao, Zhang, Jingchao, Hong, John, Pak, Sangyeon, Park, Jong Bae, Lee, Young-Woo, Lee, Juwon, Kim, Byung-Sung, Morris, Stephen M., Sohn, Jung Inn, Cha, SeungNam and Kim, Jong Min 2023. Evolution of local structural motifs in colloidal quantum dot semiconductor nanocrystals leading to nanofaceting. Nano Letters 23 (6) , pp. 2277-2286. 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c04851

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Abstract

Colloidal nanocrystals (NCs) have shown remarkable promise for optoelectronics, energy harvesting, photonics, and biomedical imaging. In addition to optimizing quantum confinement, the current challenge is to obtain a better understanding of the critical processing steps and their influence on the evolution of structural motifs. Computational simulations and electron microscopy presented in this work show that nanofaceting can occur during nanocrystal synthesis from a Pb-poor environment in a polar solvent. This could explain the curved interfaces and the olivelike-shaped NCs observed experimentally when these conditions are employed. Furthermore, the wettability of the PbS NCs solid film can be further modified via stoichiometry control, which impacts the interface band bending and, therefore, processes such as multiple junction deposition and interparticle epitaxial growth. Our results suggest that nanofaceting in NCs can become an inherent advantage when used to modulate band structures beyond what is traditionally possible in bulk crystals.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Physics and Astronomy
Publisher:	American Chemical Society
ISSN:	1530-6984
Funders:	EPSRC, Royal Society
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	13 March 2023
Date of Acceptance:	7 March 2023
Last Modified:	20 Jun 2023 18:10
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/157703

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