Chemical Physics and Dynamics of Surfaces – Nanoparticles – Nanocrystals growth

Team

  • Permanent members: Emmanuel Lhuillier, Yoann Prado
  • PhD student: Huichen Zang

The group is involved in the design of optoelectronics devices using nanocrystals as active materials. To do so, we grow a broad range of material, see figure below:

Captionmicroscopy image of some nanocrystal grown at INSP.

The team is fully furnished to perform nanocrystal growth and their characterization

Caption: image of nanocrystal synthetic setup.

The group has a special focus on narrow band gap material and for this topic we also developed new synthetic procedure. For example, we report the first highly concentrated synthesis of HgTe nanocrystals by swicthing from conventional mercury salts to liquid mercury as precursor. We thus obtained the most concentrated synthesis of HgTe nanpocrystal ever reported with concentration close to 100 g/L. This new synthetic route is promissing to achieve greener synthesis of HgTe with reduced exposure of work force to Hg precursor.

CaptionScheme of liquid Hg based synthesis of HgTe nanocrystals.

We have also been the first to report nanocrystals with THz absorption. A new synthetic procedure has enable the growth of nanocrystal with size above the Bohr radius, thus enabling absorption up to 100 µm. This work demonstrated the possibility to tune the absorption of HgTe nanocrystal all over the infrared from 1 to 100 µm.

Caption: Infrared spectra of HgTe nanocrystals with various sizes.

 

Collaborations

  • ESPCI-LPEM – Sandrine Ithurria
  • C2N – Gilles Patriarche (microscopy)

 

Funding

  • ERC Black QD,
  • Projet ANR Copin et Frontal

 

Transversal topic

 

Publications