Chemistry Department Colloquium

Strategies in the fabrication of nanomaterials such as Au nanoparticles, and a number of semiconductor nanowires or nanoribbons of Si, SiO2, Ge, GeO2, ZnO, ZnS, CdSe, SnO2 etc. conducted in our laboratory will be briefly described. The morphology of these systems examined by electron microscopy will be presented. The electronic structure of these systems has been investigated with synchrotron based spectroscopy to reveal the interplay of surface and size effects in Au nanoparticles and the morphology dependent luminescence properties of ZnS and ZnO nano structures. The technique sometimes known as X-ray Excited Optical Luminescence (XEOL) in both the energy and time domain (Time-resolved XEOL) will be described in some details and its application illustrated with the investigation of a light emitting nanowire CdSe-Si heterostructure.