Highlights

In brief

The technique introduces defects in molybdenum sulfide quantum dots, enhancing their photoluminescent and catalytic properties.

© Pixabay

Beauty in quantum imperfections

6 Mar 2023

A new two-step process for fabricating quantum dots with tuneable properties offers exciting possibilities for medical imaging and beyond.

As Albert Einstein famously quipped, things get spooky at the quantum level. Matter and light behave in mysterious ways at the smallest scales, and these phenomena can be leveraged to power a suite of technologies from medical imaging to energy storage.

For example, quantum dots (QDs) are man-made nanoscale crystals that shuttle electrons and possess one-of-a-kind optical, physical, catalytic and electrical properties. Yet despite their potential, materials science experts say that methods for reliably fabricating QDs aren’t quite up to scratch.

“Synthesising QDs using methods such as laser, plasma and electron bombardment can result in low quantum yields,” said Houjuan Zhu from A*STAR’s Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE). Besides quality issues, it is also difficult to introduce defects during production—a necessary step for tuning QD properties.

“These methods are also complicated and costly, and crucially, not effective at regulating and engineering the defects in QDs to achieve a specific desired effect, limiting the novel application of QDs in various fields,” she explained.

In partnership with colleagues from the National University of Singapore, Shanxi University, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications and Southwest University, Zhu’s team explored high-performing, scalable processes to synthesise QDs using a material called molybdenum sulfide (MoS2).

They designed a two-stage procedure that first uses a bottom-up approach to create MoS2 QDs through carefully controlled chemical reactions between Mo and S ions. Next up, an alkaline etching step, which generates a high number of S vacancy defects, resulting in QDs that emit a bright blue glow called photoluminescence.

“This makes them highly valuable for medical applications such as bioimaging,” said Zhu. “The increase in defect density also enhances their photocatalytic capabilities, enabling them to accelerate chemical reactions.”

The researchers hypothesised that the alkaline etching process enriches the oxygen content in the MoS2 QDs, which led to a higher electron density of active sites, subsequently creating more defects—and they turned out to be right.

“Through density functional theory calculations and simulations, we were able to prove, for the first time, that the increase in photoluminescence and photo-oxidation in QDs is driven by the controlled formation of defects,” said Zhu.

Catapulting off the study’s success, the team is now exploring novel precision engineering methods for MoS2 QDs. “We believe that this will open the door to new and exciting applications in areas such as biomedicine, catalysis, energy storage and optoelectronics,” Zhu said, adding that the team is also looking into QDs made from other materials to expand their application landscape.

The A*STAR-affiliated researchers contributing to this research are from the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE).

Want to stay up to date with breakthroughs from A*STAR? Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn!

References

Zhu, H., Zan, W., Chen, W., Jiang, W., Ding, X., et al. Defect-Rich Molybdenum Sulfide Quantum Dots for Amplified Photoluminescence and Photonics-Driven Reactive Oxygen Species Generation. Advanced Materials 34 (31), 2200004 (2022). │article

About the Researcher

Houjuan Zhu received her PhD degree in Chemistry from University of Science and Technology of China in 2015, and then she respectively worked as a Research Fellow at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) from 2015 to 2017 and at National University of Singapore (NUS) from 2018-2021. Currently, she is working in Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE), A*STAR. Her research focuses on the design and synthesis of various nanomaterials including two-dimensional nanosheets, transition metal dichalcogenides quantum dots, semiconducting polymer nanoparticles in bioimaging, cancer therapy, antibacterial, biosensing and photocatalyst.

This article was made for A*STAR Research by Wildtype Media Group