Pulses

Abstract

In 1981, while studying a semiconductordoped glass matrix, Soviet physicist Alexey Ekimov discovered that the semiconductors had formed nanoscale crystals that exhibited a quantized size dependence of their emission spectra. It was the first experimental observation of quantum dots (QDs). Another Soviet physicist, Alexander Efros, theorized that the nanocrystals’ behavior was due to confinement of their electrons. Around the same time, the U.S. chemist Louis Brus first synthesized colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals.