Molten-droplet synthesis of composite CdSe hollow nanoparticles.

Many colloidal synthesis routes are not scalable to high production rates, especially for nanoparticles of complex shape or composition, due to precursor expense and hazards, low yields, and the large number of processing steps. The present work describes a strategy to synthesize hollow nanoparticles (HNPs) out of metal chalcogenides, based on the slow heating of a low-melting-point metal salt, an elemental chalcogen, and an alkylammonium surfactant in octadecene solvent. The synthesis and characterization of CdSe HNPs with an outer diameter of 15.

Understanding the solvent polarity effects on surfactant-capped nanoparticles.

Understanding the molecular interactions between suspended nanoparticles (NPs) and the suspending solvent fluid may provide a useful avenue to create and to study exotic NP ensembles. This study focused on using a coarse-grained computational model to investigate the molecular interactions between oleate-capped NPs in various solvents, and to relate the results to experimental features of solvent-suspended, oleate-capped CdSe quantum dots (QDs). The QDs were modeled as a closed-shell fullerene molecule with an oleate-like ligand attached to each vertex.