Exploring The Chemical Paths to Doped II-VI Magic Size Clusters

The introduction of targeted, substitutional chemical dopants in a semiconductor lattice is a useful strategy to impart new functionality and in some instances emergent phenomena when synthesized at the nanometer lengthscale. One major challenge in the quantum dot field has been overcoming the thermodynamic penalty associated with introducing an impurity ion into the critical nucleus, which typically leads to an undoped core and dopants only doped in the shell or surface of the nanocrystal. The role of metastable magic size clusters in the synthesis of various quantum-confined nanostructures including doped nanostructures has received much attention in the past decade. In this talk, we will explore the common routes to prepare (doped) magic-size nanoclusters and introduce an alternate method that employs (doped) molecular clusters as single-source precursors.