The tutorial will provide an overview of quantum confined semiconductor nanostructures, including fabrication, characterization, and spectroscopic properties, along with a highlight of the most relevant and promising applications.

Nanoscale structures made of semiconductors, such as colloidal nanocrystals/nanorods and epitaxial quantum dots/quantum wires, show unique properties that arise both from effects of quantum confinement and strong influences of surfaces.  Recent progresses in the design, preparation, and characterization of semiconductor quantum dots and nanorods have significantly advanced our fundamental knowledge of electronic structures, carrier dynamics, and multiexciton interactions in strongly confined nanoscale materials. Our understanding of interactions between individual nanoscale building blocks in complex assemblies has also significantly advanced over the past several years. This has led several groups to carry out demonstrations of efficient charge and exciton transport in engineered nanocrystal assemblies, control of charge injection into nanoscale particles, and energy and electron transfer phenomena in hybrid nanostructures based on luminescent QDs. It has also led to designing applications involving these materials in areas that might otherwise seem unrelated, including lasing, photovoltaic and light-emitting devices as well fluorescence-based biological applications.

The tutorial will also provide an overview of the various routes for successful preparation of quantum dots, quantum rods, and the characterization of such materials. There will be an emphasis placed on their structure, as well as optical, spectroscopic and electronic properties. The tutorial will look closely at the most relevant applications in areas such as light-emitting and photovoltaic devices and other energy transfer-based devices.

Moungi G. Bawendi
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Victor I. Klimov
Los Alamos National Laboratory

Xiaogang Peng
University of Arkansas