Chalcogenide Perovskite Nanocrystals, A New Generation of Sustainable Quantum Dots

The development of non-toxic, cost-effective and eco-friendly semiconductor nanocrystals (NCs)

for opto-electronic applications has become a major scientific challenge with great potential

economic outcomes. This project aims at exploring the chalcogenide perovskite family to produce

new generation of clean and earth abundant NCs with tunable band-gaps. The chalcogenide

perovskites (ABX3) NCs will be synthesized by combining group IIA (Ca, Sr, Ba), IVB (Ti, Zr, Hf) and

VIA (S, Se) elements via bottom up colloidal approach. These novel semiconductors are predicted

to have high carrier mobility and direct band gap comparable to traditional semiconductors which

make them attractive for PV and optoelectronics. They have only been made in bulk form and, for

their synthesis as NCs, in depth research on precursor choice, reaction kinetics and surface

chemistry is needed. First a detailed screening of synthesis routes will be done to find promising

combination of metals and chalcogen to optimize the NC synthetic protocol in view of band-gap

tuning. The opto-electronic properties will be thoroughly analysed; based on which possible

exploitation of the NCs in applications e.g., phosphors, photodetectors will be assessed. The focus

on synthesis, characterization and application of novel NCs makes it a multidisciplinary project and

development of these NCs can bring a breakthrough in semiconductor research which will find

direct implementation in academic and industrial R&D units.