Quantum Dot Display Science and Technology

Chapter 3Principles and Practices for Quantum Dots Synthesis

Derrick Allan Taylor, Justice Agbeshie Teku, Jong-Soo Lee

Department of Energy Science and Engineering, DGIST, Republic of Korea

3.1 Introduction

Nanoparticles cover a broader spectrum of natural and artificial amorphous or crystalline materials on the nanoscale [1, 2]. Nanocrystals (NCs) refer to the crystalline form of nanoparticles formed from various materials, including metals, semiconductors, and metal oxides [3]. Semiconductor NCs, often referred to as quantum dots (QDs), are unique and artificially made functional materials that exhibit size-, shape-, and composition-dependent physicochemical and electronic properties [4]. The size-dependent emission of QDs is termed the quantum size effect (Figure 3.1a). The quantum confinement effect becomes evident when the diameter of a material equals the de Broglie wavelength of an electron’s wave function. A QD consists of only a few atoms and has sizes smaller than 10 nm (Figure 3.1b) [5, 6]. Extensive research efforts toward QD synthesis have generated various methodologies with reliable accuracies [7–9] for making quality QD particles applicable for QD-based devices [10–13]. In 2023, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Moungi G. Bawendi, Louis E. Brus, and Alexei I. Ekimov “for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots” [14, 15]. This phenomenal history started between 1980 and 1982 when Brus and Ekimov independently pioneered the creation of QDs and ...