Evolution of Local Structural Motifs in Colloidal Quantum Dot Semiconductor Nanocrystals Leading to Nanofaceting

Bo Hou, Felix Cosmin Mocanu, Yuljae Cho, Jongchul Lim, Jiangtao Feng, Jingchao Zhang, John Hong, Sangyeon Pak, Jong Bae Park, Young Woo Lee, Juwon Lee, Byung Sung Kim, Stephen M. Morris, Jung Inn Sohn, Seung Nam Cha, Jong Min Kim

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

7 Scopus citations

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.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2277-2286
Number of pages10
JournalNano Letters
Volume23
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - 22 Mar 2023

Keywords

  • density functional theory
  • electron microscopy
  • morphology
  • quantum dots

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