Abstract
This thesis describes the optical and electrical properties of colloidal PbS nanocrystals synthesized in aqueous solution and comprising different capping ligands and/or matrices. Post-synthesis thermal annealing of thiol-capped PbS colloidal quantum dots (QDs) is discussed and shown to provide a novel means of tailoring the morphological and electronic properties of the QDs. Two different regimes are reported: at low annealing temperatures (< 80oC), the annealing provides a simple strategy for controlling and narrowing the QD size distribution and photoluminescence emission. At higher annealing temperatures, the displacement of the thiol-ligands promotes the fusion of nearby quantum dots thus leading to interconnected nanocrystals. A study of the circularly polarized magneto- photoluminescence of colloidal PbS nanocrystals under the influence of a magnetic field up to 30T is presented. A semiclassical model for the population of polarized excitons is used to account for the measured magnetic field and temperature dependence of the degree of circular polarization of the QD photoluminescence. The g-factor, gX, of the exciton and its dependence on the QD size is reported for the first time. The value of gX increases from 0.1 to 0.3 at low temperature with decreasing the nanocrystal diameter from 9 to 4 nm. The transport properties of a PbS QDs thin film deposited between two electrodes are investigated. This study reveals a non-linear dependence of the current on the applied bias. At low temperature (T<100 K), the conduction is limited by the charging energy (~20 meV) of the quantum dot. The fabrication of a solid-state device based …