Dislocation-Induced Chirality of Semiconductor Nanocrystals

Abstract

Optical activity is a common natural phenomenon, which occurs in individual molecules, biomolecules, biological species, crystalline solids, liquid crystals, and various nanosized objects, leading to numerous important applications in almost every field of modern science and technology. Because this activity can hardly be altered, creation of artificial active media with controllable optical properties is of paramount importance. Here, for the first time to the best of our knowledge, we theoretically demonstrate that optical activity can be inherent to many semiconductor nanowires, as it is induced by chiral dislocations naturally developing during their growth. By assembling such nanowires in two- or three-dimensional periodic lattices, one can create optically active quantum supercrystals whose activity can be varied in many ways owing to the size quantization of the nanowires' energy spectra. We believe that this research is of particular importance for the future development of semiconducting nanomaterials and their applications in nanotechnology, chemistry, biology, and medicine.

Completely Chiral Optical Force for Enantioseparation

“…This is true for all kinds of chiral nanoparticles, which are nowadays produced in great variety using the emerging fabrication techniques345. Among them are semiconductor nanocrystals with screw dislocations67 or chiral surfaces8910111213. Much like enantiomeric molecules, chiral nanocrystals feature significantly different interactions with biomolecules and biological tissues14.…”

Mixing of quantum states: A new route to creating optical activity

“…The coupling can be induced by screw dislocations, impurity ions, point defects, imperfections of the nanocrystal shape, magnetic field, etc. 20, 21, 28–31 . The stationary perturbation theory predicts that the coupled states hybridize, resulting in the formation of new states of energies , with , , and 32 .…”

Twisted and tubular silica structures by anionic surfactant fibers encapsulation

“…Bringing chirality to plasmonic nanomaterials is on demand for potential applications in nanotechnology and metamaterials [43][44][45][46][47]. We used the fabricated silica structures as a scaffold for gold nanoparticles assemblies by applying different strategies.…”