title: Prospects of nanoscience with nanocrystals.
abstract: Colloidal nanocrystals (NCs, i.e., crystalline nanoparticles) have become an important class of materials with great potential for applications ranging from medicine to electronic and optoelectronic devices. Today's strong research focus on NCs has been prompted by the tremendous progress in their synthesis. Impressively narrow size distributions of just a few percent, rational shape-engineering, compositional modulation, electronic doping, and tailored surface chemistries are now feasible for a broad range of inorganic compounds. The performance of inorganic NC-based photovoltaic and light-emitting devices has become competitive to other state-of-the-art materials. Semiconductor NCs hold unique promise for near- and mid-infrared technologies, where very few semiconductor materials are available. On a purely fundamental side, new insights into NC growth, chemical transformations, and self-organization can be gained from rapidly progressing in situ characterization and direct imaging techniques. New phenomena are constantly being discovered in the photophysics of NCs and in the electronic properties of NC solids. In this Nano Focus, we review the state of the art in research on colloidal NCs focusing on the most recent works published in the last 2 years.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, ETH Zürich , CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Maksym V
authors.initials: MV
authors.lastname: Kovalenko
authors.forename: Liberato
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Manna
authors.forename: Andreu
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cabot
authors.forename: Zeger
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Hens
authors.forename: Dmitri V
authors.initials: DV
authors.lastname: Talapin
authors.forename: Cherie R
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Kagan
authors.forename: Victor I
authors.initials: VI
authors.lastname: Klimov
authors.forename: Andrey L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Rogach
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Reiss
authors.forename: Delia J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Milliron
authors.forename: Philippe
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Guyot-Sionnnest
authors.forename: Gerasimos
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Konstantatos
authors.forename: Wolfgang J
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Parak
authors.forename: Taeghwan
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Hyeon
authors.forename: Brian A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Korgel
authors.forename: Christopher B
authors.initials: CB
authors.lastname: Murray
authors.forename: Wolfgang
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Heiss
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D006801:Humans; D007834:Lasers; D053758:Nanoparticles / Q000737:chemistry / Q000627:therapeutic use; D036103:Nanotechnology / Q000379:methods*; D045663:Quantum Dots; D013499:Surface Properties