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| New Breakthrough in CdSe Nanocrystals Synthesis |
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Colloidal CdSe nanocrystals (NCs) with tunable emission have attracted broad attention in recent years for various applications including biological fluorescent labels, light emitting diodes, lasers, and solar cells. Many works on the synthesis of CdSe NCs have been reported, such as the single molecule precursor route, the organometallic precursor route, the solvothermal route, the microwave irradiation route and so on. However, in these methods, a mass of expensive solvents (TOPO, TOP) and hazardous, unstable precursors have to be employed for synthesis of CdSe NCs. ,The costs of large-scale synthesis of NCs are still very high. In order to meet the demand for both fundamental research and industry application, it is worthwhile to develop a cheap and green Non-TOP-Based route for large-scale synthesis of high-quality CdSe NCs.
Laboratory of Controlled Preparation and Application of Nanomaterials, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) is leaded by Professor Tang. Tang and her co-workers focused their research on the preparation and application of nanomaterials in recent three decades. Most recently the cooperation with Professor Zou Binsuo working at Institute of Physics CAS make a great progress in the synthesis of CdSe NCs. Low-cost and green reagents Paraffin liquid and oleic acid were utilized as the reaction medium for the synthesis of CdSe NCs, while the expensive, toxic, and not environmentally friendly TOP (or TBP) and TOPO were avoided in the process. Current method significantly simplifies the reaction for green and low-cost synthesis of the CdSe NCs, and has following advantages: (1) it is environmentally friendly comparing with the TOP-Based route. The as-employed solvents oleic acid and paraffin liquid are natural products without toxicity; (2) The synthesis route described here is low cost to fabricate the CdSe NCs. It would be of great potential for both laboratory research and industrial applications. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time to modify the Se source without using TOP (or TBP). The procedure reported by Murray et al. always consisted of a complex between Se and TOP.
These results have published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry B (VOL.109 16671－16675,2005) and soon attracted a lot of attentions in worldwide in the field of nanocrystals synthesis. In Sept 15th 2005, Philip Ball wrote an article titled "Nanoparticles cooked up in aerosol spray" in Material Update part on the website of Nature. In this article a whole passage was used to describe the works and great praise was given to our works. "TOP is an expensive and toxic solvent. That is why a modification of the original solvent pyrolysis method that dispenses with TOP, reported by Fangqiong Tang of the Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry in Beijing, China, and co-workers looks appealing" Philip Ball said "Their technique uses simple long-chain alkanes (C18–C24) as the solvent, which are both cheaper and 'greener' than TOP. If this approach can be combined with Didenko and Suslick's "chemical aerosol flow synthesis, making nanoparticles should become a much more amenable business". Currently, Professor Tang is cooperating with Yuri Didenko and Kenneth Suslick working at the University of Illinois, and looking for the possibility of large-scale synthesis of high-quality CdSe NCs using chemical aerosol spray method. |
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