Non-trioctylphosphine and chemical aerosol flow growth of high quality thiol-capped CdSe nanocrystals

We report the growth of high quality thiol-capped CdSe nanocrystals with narrow size distribution using a continuous, fast, green, low-cost, non-trioctylphosphine (Non-TOP) based chemical aerosol flow synthesis (CAFS) technique. Various synthetic parameters, such as reaction temperature, growth time, precursor ratio, and the hydrocarbon chain length of thiols, have been tuned to study the nanocrystal growth mechanism. The characteristics of fluorescence emission with long lifetimes suggests the existence of surface trap states induced by surface thiol ligands. Our primary results showed that these thiol-capped CdSe nanocrystals have enhanced the photovoltaic performance, indicating their great potential for solar energy conversion applications. Because the current strategy is fast and highly reproducible, it would facilitate the commercial scale synthesis of high quality CdSe nanocrystals with narrow size distribution.