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Title: Coherent Acoustic Phonons in Colloidal Semiconductor Nanocrystal Superlattices

Journal Article · · ACS Nano
 [1];  [2];  [1];  [3];  [3];  [4];  [1];  [5];  [5];  [3]
  1. Univ. of Nottingham (United Kingdom)
  2. Technische Univ. of Dortmund (Germany)
  3. Univ. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA (United States)
  4. Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg (Russia)
  5. Technische Univ. of Dortmund (Germany); Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg (Russia)

The phonon properties of films fabricated from colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals play a major role in thermal conductance and electron scattering, which govern the principles for building colloidal-based electronics and optics including thermoelectric devices with a high ZT factor. The key point in understanding the phonon properties is to obtain the strength of the elastic bonds formed by organic ligands connecting the individual nanocrystallites. In the case of very weak bonding, the ligands become the bottleneck for phonon transport between infinitively rigid nanocrystals. In the opposite case of strong bonding, the colloids cannot be considered as infinitively rigid beads and the distortion of the superlattice caused by phonons includes the distortion of the colloids themselves. We use the picosecond acoustics technique to study the acoustic coherent phonons in superlattices of nanometer crystalline CdSe colloids. We observe the quantization of phonons with frequencies up to 30 GHz. The frequencies of quantized phonons depend on the thickness of the colloidal films and possess linear phonon dispersion. Finally, the measured speed of sound and corresponding wave modulus in the colloidal films point on the strong elastic coupling provided by organic ligands between colloidal nanocrystals.

Research Organization:
Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States). Advanced Photon Source (APS)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES). Materials Sciences & Engineering Division; German Research Foundation (DFG); German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF); Government of Russia
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0002158; BA 1549/14-1; 05K13PE1; 14.B25.31.0025
OSTI ID:
1247347
Journal Information:
ACS Nano, Vol. 10, Issue 1; ISSN 1936-0851
Publisher:
American Chemical Society (ACS)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
ENGLISH
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 48 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (14)

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Robustness of elastic properties in polymer nanocomposite films examined over the full volume fraction range journal November 2018
Direct observation of polymer surface mobility via nanoparticle vibrations journal July 2018
Nanoparticle Superlattices: The Roles of Soft Ligands journal September 2017
Effects of Microsphere Size on the Mechanical Properties of Photonic Crystals journal December 2018
Longitudinal eigenvibration of multilayer colloidal crystals and the effect of nanoscale contact bridges journal January 2019
Phonon-engineered solids constructed from nanocrystals journal August 2019
Self-assembly and characterization of 2D plasmene nanosheets journal August 2019
Tuning the electronic properties of hexanuclear cobalt sulfide superatoms via ligand substitution journal January 2019
Interconnected assembly of ZrO 2 @SiO 2 nanoparticles with dimensional selectivity and refractive index tunability journal January 2019
Orientational order controls crystalline and amorphous thermal transport in superatomic crystals journal September 2016
Nanocrystal superlattices as phonon-engineered solids and acoustic metamaterials journal September 2019
Phonon-engineered solids constructed from nanocrystals text January 2019
Nanocrystal superlattices as phonon-engineered solids and acoustic metamaterials text January 2019

Figures / Tables (4)