Nanocrystals have become an important part of modern materials science, with quantum dots helping inspire the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Yet despite their enormous potential, researchers have only been able to produce these microscopic crystals from a relatively narrow range of materials. Now, chemists at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory have developed a method for creating nanocrystals from metal nitrides, a technologically important group of materials that had resisted conventional nanocrystal synthesis.
The study, published in Nature, could expand the possibilities for electronics and other applications, including flexible lighting and medical implants. "We were able to show how to make a series of nearly a dozen materials that could not be synthesized by traditional methods," said Ruiming Lin, a graduate student at UChicago and first author on the new paper. Metal nitrides are already widely used across technology and manufacturing.
Gallium nitride, for example, is found in much of today's lighting technology, from LED bulbs to laptop displays. Turning these materials into nanocrystals could greatly expand the ways they are used. Instead of being limited mainly to rigid films, metal nitride nanocrystals could eventually be mixed into polymers, printed with inkjet techniques, or incorporated into fabrics and other flexible devices.
"This expands the boundaries of the field beyond what were previously fundamental constraints, and lays the foundation for the use of nitrides as nanomaterials," said Dmitri Talapin, the Ernest DeWitt Burton Distinguished Service Professor of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering at UChicago, a scientist at Argonne and the senior author on the paper. Nanocrystals are extremely small crystals, with millions or even billions able to fit on a fingernail. Materials can behave very differently at this scale, sometimes producing bright light or becoming especially effective at accelerating chemical reactions.
In principle, scientists should be able to create nanocrystals from a huge variety of substances. In practice, however, many materials have proven difficult or impossible to make in this form. Lin and other researchers in Talapin's laboratory set out to push past those limitations.
Their attention turned to metal nitrides, compounds formed when metals combine with nitrogen. As a group, these materials are strong, biocompatible, and resistant to both heat and corrosion. Those qualities make metal nitrides valuable for applications such as consumer electronics.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
