Anisotropy in CdSe quantum rods

The size-dependent optical and electronic properties of semiconductor nanocrystals have drawn much attention in the past decade, and have been very well understood for spherical ones. The advent of the synthetic methods to make rod-like CdSe nanocrystals with wurtzite structure has offered us a new opportunity to study their properties as functions of their shape. This dissertation includes three main parts: synthesis of CdSe nanorods with tightly controlled widths and lengths, their optical and dielectric properties, and their large-scale assembly, all of which are either directly or indirectly caused by the uniaxial crystallographic structure of wurtzite CdSe. The hexagonal wurtzite structure is believed to be the primary reason for the growth of CdSe nanorods. It represents itself in the kinetic stabilization of the rod-like particles over the spherical ones in the presence of phosphonic acids. By varying the composition of the surfactant mixture used for synthesis we have achieved tight control of the widths and lengths of the nanorods. The synthesis of monodisperse CdSe nanorods enables us to systematically study their size-dependent properties. For example, room temperature single particle fluorescence spectroscopy has shown that nanorods emit linearly polarized photoluminescence. Theoretical calculations have shown that it is due to the crossing between the two highest occupied electronic levels with increasing aspect ratio. We also measured the permanent electric dipole moment of the nanorods with transient electric birefringence technique. Experimental results on nanorods with different sizes show that the dipole moment is linear to the particle volume, indicating that it originates from the non-centrosymmetric hexagonal lattice. The elongation of the nanocrystals also results in the anisotropic inter-particle interaction. One of the consequences is the formation of liquid crystalline phases when the nanorods are dispersed in solvent to a high enough concentration. The preparation of the stable liquid crystalline solution of CdSe nanorods is described, as well as the large-scale alignment of the nanorods by taking advantage of the long-range orientational correlation in the liquid crystals. In addition, we investigated the phase diagram of the nanorod solution, as a step toward understanding the possible role of the long-range attractive interaction between the nanorods in the formation of lyotropic liquid crystals