Projects per year
Abstract
To fully deploy the potential of semiconductor nanocrystal films as low-cost electronic materials, a better understanding of the amount of dopants required to make their conductivity metallic is needed. In bulk semiconductors, the critical concentration of electrons at the metal-insulator transition is described by the Mott criterion. Here, we theoretically derive the critical concentration nc for films of heavily doped nanocrystals devoid of ligands at their surface and in direct contact with each other. In the accompanying experiments, we investigate the conduction mechanism in films of phosphorus-doped, ligand-free silicon nanocrystals. At the largest electron concentration achieved in our samples, which is half the predicted nc, we find that the localization length of hopping electrons is close to three times the nanocrystals diameter, indicating that the film approaches the metal-insulator transition.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 299-303 |
Number of pages | 5 |
Journal | Nature Materials |
Volume | 15 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Mar 1 2016 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2016 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
MRSEC Support
- Primary
PubMed: MeSH publication types
- Journal Article
- Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Metal-insulator transition in films of doped semiconductor nanocrystals'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 2 Finished
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University of Minnesota MRSEC (DMR-1420013)
Lodge, T. P. (PI)
11/1/14 → 10/31/20
Project: Research project
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MRSEC IRG-2: Sustainable Nanocrystal Materials
Kortshagen, U. R. (Coordinator), Aydil, E. S. (Senior Investigator), Campbell, S. A. (Senior Investigator), Francis, L. F. (Senior Investigator), Haynes, C. L. (Senior Investigator), Hogan, C. (Senior Investigator), Mkhoyan, A. (Senior Investigator), Shklovskii, B. I. (Senior Investigator) & Wang, X. (Senior Investigator)
11/1/14 → 10/31/20
Project: Research project