Synthesis and development of semiconductor quantum dots and perovskite nanocrystals in glass and glass-ceramics for photonic applications

Abstract

Semiconductor (SC) quantum dots (QDs) and Metal halide perovskites (MHP) both represent one of the most important nanomaterials for applications in diverse fields of photonics. Semiconductor QDs, are a subject of considerable interest because of their unique optical properties and functionalities, which are not exhibited by their bulk counterparts due to the quantum confinement effect. They exhibit tunable optical properties due to the discretization of the energy levels and show a maximum response to the size-related properties. Glasses doped with SC QDs have been widely studied due to their high potential for novel applications in the field of high-performance optoelectronic devices such as cutoff optical filters, light-emitting diodes (LEDs), laser diodes (LDs), etc. Laser direct writing (LDW) is a fabrication method, which offers numerous possibilities to modify materials, implement new optical functionality, or improve existing materials properties. This technique has been applied to a large variety of glass systems, including silicates, aluminosilicates, aluminoborates, etc. Femtosecond DLW relies on nonequilibrium synthesis and processing with photon beams, opening new ways to create materials and devices that are not currently possible with established techniques. Fabrication of 3D integrated photonic structures inside a transparent glass substrate using ultrafast laser inscription offers unique potential applications, such as in astrophotonics, optical communication, and active devices, quantum photonics, and emulation of quantum systems, optofluidics, and sensing. On the other hand, Metal halide perovskites (MHPs) have emerged as a class of SCs for high-performance optoelectronics, such as photovoltaics lasers and LEDs. Compared with bulk perovskites and nanostructures of conventional SCs, MHPs show advantageous optical and electrical properties, such as high photoluminescence (PL) quantum yields, strong anisotropic absorption and emission, higher exciton binding energies, and widely tunable bandgaps, and thus could offer many exciting and potentially unique opportunities for optoelectronics. As in our present-day scenario of the anticipated energy deficiency shortly, renewable energy sources focus on attention now. Photovoltaic (PV) solar cell remains the best choice. In this regard, the MHP nanocrystals (NC), based solar cells have attracted much attention due to their high light-to-current efficiency. The supercritical solvent method is a newly developed technique of MHP synthesis which has shown various advantages over the conventional techniques to produce NCs in a highly reproducible manner in terms of crystal structure, composition, morphology, surface chemistry while keeping the PL properties of the bulk materials obtained at high temperature. Based on the above motivations, our main objectives are specified as, (i) application of femtosecond DLW technique on SC QD and metal NPs-embedded glass and glass-ceramics to develop space-selective growth of the QDs and NPs to add new functionalities for advanced optical applications, (ii) Synthesis and development of SC QDs (using the conventional method) and perovskite NCs (using the supercritical solvent method) in new glass matrices to achieve enhanced PL emission properties. To achieve these, the outline of the work plan is (1) synthesis of SC QDs and metal NP-doped glasses in LaMaV, UFSCar, (2) MHP NCs (CsPbX3), X= Br, I, will be synthesized using the supercritical solvent method at ICMCB, (3) Those NCs will be embedded in the different base glasses along with different RE3+ ions, (4) DLW will be applied to all the above-mentioned glasses aiming to generate spatially selective SC QDs and MHP NCs. The technique may also be applied to develop noble metal nanoclusters and investigating the mechanism of metal cluster formation and metal-semiconductor hybrid nanoparticles (HNPs) in metal-semiconductor co-doped glasses. (AU)