Semiconductor Nanocrystals

Abstract

The following is an edited transcript of the presentation given by A. Paul Alivisatos, recipient of the Outstanding Young Investigator Award, at the 1995 MRS Spring Meeting in San Francisco.The work I will describe on semiconductor nanocrystals started with the realization that it is possible to precipitate a semiconductor out of an organic liquid. We can precipitate out a semiconductor as a colloid—a very small-sized semiconductor with reduced dimensionality—that will show large, quantum size effects. A dream at that time was to make an electronic material by such a process in a liquid beaker, by starting with an organic fluid and somehow injecting something into the fluid to make very small particles, which we could use in electronics. The materials we use in electronics today have perfect crystalline order. We are able to put in dopants very specifically, or control precisely their arrangements in space in enormously complicated ways. The level of purity of electronic materials is so high that making an electronic material in a wet chemistry approach seems almost impossible. If, in addition, we specify that the size must be controlled precisely, we recognize the project is a problem for basic research, yet not one ready for applications. Many fundamental problems arise if we try to make semiconductor particles, in a liquid, of such high quality that they can be used as electronic materials.