InAs Nanocrystals with Robust p-Type Doping

Lior Asor, Jing Liu, Yonatan Ossia, Durgesh C. Tripathi, Nir Tessler, Anatoly I. Frenkel, Uri Banin*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

12 Scopus citations

Abstract

Robust control over the carrier type is fundamental for the fabrication of nanocrystal-based optoelectronic devices, such as the p–n homojunction, but effective incorporation of impurities in semiconductor nanocrystals and its characterization is highly challenging due to their small size. Herein, InAs nanocrystals (NCs), post-synthetically doped with Cd, serve as a model system for successful p-type doping of originally n-type InAs nanocrystals, as demonstrated in field effect transistors (FETs). Advanced structural analysis, using atomic resolution electron microscopy and synchrotron X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy reveal that Cd impurities reside near and on the nanocrystal surface acting as substitutional p-dopants replacing Indium. Commensurately, Cd-doped InAs FETs exhibit remarkable stability of their hole conduction, mobility, and hysteretic behavior over time when exposed to air, while intrinsic InAs NCs FETs are easily oxidized and their performance quickly declines. Therefore, Cd plays a dual role acting as a p-type dopant, and also protects the nanocrystals from oxidation, as evidenced directly by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurements of air exposed samples of intrinsic and Cd-doped InAs NCs films. This study demonstrates robust p-type doping of InAs nanocrystals, setting the stage for implementation of such doped nanocrystal systems in printed electronic devices.

Original languageAmerican English
Article number2007456
JournalAdvanced Functional Materials
Volume31
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - 3 Feb 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Center of Excellence, grant no. 1867/17, U.B.), the Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 488/16, N.T.), and the Technion Ollendorff Minerva Center (N.T.). EXAFS analysis and modeling by A.I.F. were supported as part of the Integrated Mesoscale Architectures for Sustainable Catalysis (IMASC), an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences under Award #DE-SC0012573. This research used beamline 7-BM (QAS) of the National Synchrotron Light Source II, a U.S. DOE Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) under Contract No. DE-SC0012704. A.I.F and J.L. thank Dr. S. Ehrlich and Dr. L. Ma for help with experiments at the QAS beamline. U.B. and L.A. thank Dr. Vitaly Gutkin and Dr. Sergei Remennik from the Unit for Nanocharacterization of the Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for assistance in the materials characterization and for helpful discussions. The authors also acknowledge the technical support of the staff of the Unit for Nanofabrication at the Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. U.B. thanks the Alfred & Erica Larisch memorial chair.

Funding Information:
This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Center of Excellence, grant no. 1867/17, U.B.), the Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 488/16, N.T.), and the Technion Ollendorff Minerva Center (N.T.). EXAFS analysis and modeling by A.I.F. were supported as part of the Integrated Mesoscale Architectures for Sustainable Catalysis (IMASC), an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences under Award #DE‐SC0012573. This research used beamline 7‐BM (QAS) of the National Synchrotron Light Source II, a U.S. DOE Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) under Contract No. DE‐SC0012704. A.I.F and J.L. thank Dr. S. Ehrlich and Dr. L. Ma for help with experiments at the QAS beamline. U.B. and L.A. thank Dr. Vitaly Gutkin and Dr. Sergei Remennik from the Unit for Nanocharacterization of the Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for assistance in the materials characterization and for helpful discussions. The authors also acknowledge the technical support of the staff of the Unit for Nanofabrication at the Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. U.B. thanks the Alfred & Erica Larisch memorial chair.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Wiley-VCH GmbH

Keywords

  • InAs nanocrystals
  • colloidal quantum dots
  • doping
  • field effect transistors

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