Areas such as materials chemistry, physical chemistry, organic and inorganic chemistry have been at the forefront of an era of technological bloom. Within this progression of technology, quantum dots have been a re-occurring topic for extensive studies. Technologies such as electroluminescent device fabrication, increasing photovoltaic device efficiency, and biological labeling rely on the optimization of optical properties, which makes the use of quantum dots highly favorable. Quantum dots are semiconducting nanocrystals which possess unique, size dependent, chemical and physical properties and thus have drawn the interest of scientists due to tunable properties for desired photoluminescent and optical affects. One such way to manipulate these properties is to encapsulate quantum dots in various arrays of materials for use in further scientific investigations. For this study, exfoliated unilamellar hexaniobate (HxK4-xNb6O17) nanosheets were used for the encapsulation of manganese sulfide (MnS) and zinc sulfide (ZnS) quantum dots, and the optical properties of the resulting nanopeapod systems were studied. Preformed MnS and ZnS quantum dots were initially fabricated using methods outlined by Joo et al. (2003), and then the quantum dots and hexaniobate nanosheets were combined in order to fabricate MnS / ZnS hexaniobate nanopeapods. Fabrication of the quantum dot@hexaniobate nanopeapods was carried out via rapid solvothermal reactions recently demonstrated by our group. Optical measurements of absorption and the influence of the material on the optical band gap were determined via ultraviolet/visible spectrometry. The variation in structure, size, and composition of the quantum dots and nanopeapod structures was examined using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), and atomic force microscopy (AFM).

Synthesis and characterization of quantum dot@hexaniobate nanopeapods

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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