NSF Award
2404291
With the support of the Macromolecular, Supramolecular and Nanochemistry Program in the Division of Chemistry, Professor Dmitri Talapin of the University of Chicago will be developing methods to make some of today’s best performing semiconductor materials affordable to all. The best solar cells, LEDs and lasers use materials like gallium arsenide (GaAs). This material and its cousins, called the “III-Vs,” are made of inexpensive elements, but they are very difficult and expensive to produce by current technologies. However, if III-Vs could be turned into quantum dots (particles around one ten-millionth of an inch across that were at the core of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry), then they could be produced on a large scale. Early attempts at this failed because ordinary solvents are not compatible with the high temperatures required. The Talapin research group will be using molten salts, including sodium chloride (table salt) as solvents to grow III-V quantum dots either from scratch or by converting more readily accessible quantum dots into GaAs and other more challenging III-V-type nanostructures. This program will train scientists in state-of-the-art techniques in both chemistry and physics and also support outreach to Chicago’s South Side to enrich public understanding of the materials that illuminate our surroundings.<br/><br/>Semiconductors of the III-V variety are more engineerable than other compound semiconductors and have generally superior optical and electronic characteristics. The research program seeks to expand the fundamental boundaries for solution synthesis of nanoscale III-V semiconductors by investigating key aspects of the chemistry and physics of colloidal synthesis in molten inorganic salts, from examining the stability of nanoscale III V phases in molten salts with different Lewis acidity and redox potentials, to developing new syntheses of binary, ternary and quaternary III-V nanocrystals. State-of-the-art spectroscopic, electrochemical, and X-ray scattering techniques will be implemented for mechanistic studies of III-V nanocrystal synthesis in high-temperature molten salts. These studies have the potential to advance the development of new functional materials, to help uncover their electronic and optical properties, and to potentially open up important new avenues for the synthesis of III-V semiconductors by solution methods. The ultimate goal is to control the morphology, defects, doping, surface and other characteristics of colloidal III-V nanostructures on a level comparable to III-V nanostructures grown by high-temperature physical epitaxial deposition methods.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
