Hot-injection synthesis of uniform CDSE tetrapods using cationic surfactant ligands

Quaternary alkylammonium compounds (or quats) can promote the formation of faceted nanoparticles. Their use in hot-injection synthesis chemistry provides a new means to CdSe tetrapods with high shape and dimensional uniformity. The use of quats eliminates both selective precipitation as a purification step and alkylphosphonate ligands for inducing nonspherical shapes. This new synthesis route offers the important advantages of greener chemistry and scalability, which could further the development of tetrapod-based photovoltaic and electronic devices. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the 2007 AIChE Annual Meeting (Salt Lake City, UT 11/4-9/2007).