Luminescent Silicon Nanocrystals

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Semiconductor nanocrystals, sometimes also called quantum dots, are attractive for their size-tunable light emitting properties. Silicon nanocrystals are attractive candidates for a wide variety of applications due to their biocompatibility, earth abundance, and small overlap between their absorbance and photoluminescence bands. Some of these applications include bioimaging, battery materials, light emitting diodes, and more. With the first report of photoluminescence from porous silicon in the 1990s, understanding and controlling the photoluminescence of silicon nanocrystals has garnered keen interest.

The Kortshagen Group works on integrating highly efficient silicon quantum dots into light emitting devices, controlling surface chemistry to tune optical properties, and establishing surface-property relationships for heterostructured semiconductor quantum dots. Work is conducted in collaboration with colleagues in Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and Electrical Engineering.