Heavily-doped colloidal semiconductor and metal oxide nanocrystals: an emerging new class of plasmonic nanomaterials

The creation and study of non-metallic nanomaterials that exhibit localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) interactions with light is a rapidly growing field of research. These doped nanocrystals, mainly self-doped semiconductor nanocrystals (NCs) and extrinsically-doped metal oxide NCs, have extremely high concentrations of free charge carriers, which allows them to exhibit LSPR at near infrared (NIR) wavelengths. In this tutorial review, we discuss recent progress in developing and synthesizing doped semiconductor and metal oxide nanocrystals with LSPR, and in studying the optical properties of these plasmonic nanocrystals. We go on to discuss their growing potential for advancing biomedical and optoelectronic applications. A new class of plasmonic nanomaterials, based upon heavily-doped semiconductors and metal oxides, is rapidly developing and showing great promise for biomedical and optoelectronic applications.