Quantum dots articles within Nature Materials

Featured

  • Commentary |

    Semiconducting quantum dots have been extensively investigated with the idea of using single spins for quantum computing. Whereas access to single electrons and their spins has become routine, the challenges posed by nuclear spins remain ever present.

    • Hugo Ribeiro
    •  & Guido Burkard

  • News & Views |

    A series of breakthroughs is making the fabrication of single-atom devices possible. Their behaviour is controlled by the quantum state of single dopants, and they hold promise for applications such as quantum bits, magnetometers and memories.

    • Joaquin Fernández Rossier

  • Review Article |

    Semiconducting quantum dots are considered candidate materials for realizing spin-based quantum computation devices. This Review examines the main results obtained over the past decade concerning the so-called central spin problem, namely the interaction between a single electronic spin or hole with the surrounding nuclear environment.

    • E. A. Chekhovich
    • , M. N. Makhonin
    •  & L. M. K. Vandersypen

  • News & Views |

    Three-photon imaging enables deeper tissue penetration in vivo, however, a lack of imaging probes has restricted its use. Now, this problem has been overcome by engineering non-toxic manganese-doped quantum dots.

    • Kyryl Zagorovsky
    •  & Warren C. W. Chan

  • Article |

    Current strategies for fabricating quantum dots embedded within nanowires suffer from a number of shortcomings. Now, a versatile self-assembly approach is demonstrated for fabricating core–shell GaAs–AlGaAs nanowires with appealing optical properties.

    • M. Heiss
    • , Y. Fontana
    •  & A. Fontcuberta i Morral

  • News & Views |

    No accepted description of luminescent blinking in quantum dots is currently available. Now, experiments probing the connection between charge and fluorescence intensity fluctuations unveil an unexpected source of blinking, significantly advancing our fundamental understanding of this baffling phenomenon.

    • Todd D. Krauss
    •  & Jeffrey J. Peterson

  • Research Highlights |

    • Christian Martin

  • News & Views |

    The ability to control the nuclear spins in a semiconductor quantum dot is an important step towards a long-lived and controllable electron spin qubit.

    • Guido Burkard

  • Article |

    Inorganic nanocrystals are attractive materials for solar-cell applications. However, their performance is often limited by an insufficient alignment of internal energy levels. A tuning of these energy levels has now been achieved by attaching two different molecules to a single nanocrystal, which significantly alters its electronic and optoelectronic properties.

    • Nir Yaacobi-Gross
    • , Michal Soreni-Harari
    •  & Nir Tessler

  • Article |

    Organic ligands enhance the stability and the solution processability of semiconductor quantum dots, but they can impede charge transport in films of such nanoparticles. Passivation with atomic ligands now offers an alternative strategy that enables the fabrication of PbS colloidal-quantum-dot solar cells with power-conversion efficiencies of up to 6%.

    • Jiang Tang
    • , Kyle W. Kemp
    •  & Edward H. Sargent

  • Letter |

    The interaction between electron and nuclear spins in quantum dots is often seen as detrimental for the use of electron spin for quantum information processing. It is now shown, however, that such interaction can be used to coherently control the polarization of tens of thousands of nuclear spins, opening the way to experiments using nuclear rather than electron spin.

    • M. N. Makhonin
    • , K. V. Kavokin
    •  & A. I. Tartakovskii

  • Letter |

    Plasmonic resonances are often associated with metals, but can also be realized in semiconductors. The observation of plasmon resonances at near-infrared wavelengths in semiconductor quantum dots in particular, offers the possibility to actively control plasmonic properties through quantum-size effects within the dots.

    • Joseph M. Luther
    • , Prashant K. Jain
    •  & A. Paul Alivisatos

  • News & Views |

    Tunnelling and capacitance spectroscopies are able to image the wavefunctions of electrons in atom-like solid-state systems as they are shaped by an external magnetic field.

    • Massimo Rontani

  • Review Article |

    Single dopants in semiconductors have an atom-like electron-energy spectrum whose discrete character gives them the potential for applications such as quantum information or transistors. This Review describes the marked advances in the past decade towards observing, controllably creating and manipulating single dopants, as well as their application in devices.

    • Paul M. Koenraad
    •  & Michael E. Flatté

  • Article |

    The detailed mechanism of the pH-dependent quenching of semiconductor quantum-dot/dopamine conjugates, confirming quinone as the electron acceptor in the process, is now reported. This electrochemical knowledge of the bioconjugate system is used for the in vitro detection of drug-induced intracellular pH changes.

    • Igor L. Medintz
    • , Michael H. Stewart
    •  & Hedi Mattoussi

  • Letter |

    The strong coupling of light and matter is responsible for phenomena such as Bose–Einstein condensation. In a study of strong-coupling effects in semiconductor microcavities, the interaction between a two-level electronic system and a light field has now been observed.

    • J. Kasprzak
    • , S. Reitzenstein
    •  & W. Langbein

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