Electrophoretic deposition of cadmium selenide quantum dots using novel parameters

Electrophoresis is the motion of (charged) colloidal particles or polyelectrolytes through a liquid under the influence of an electric field. In electrophoretic deposition (EPD), the electrophoresis phenomenon is used to deposit charged particles from a suspension using an external electric field. The main advantage being the ease of deposition on conductive substrates of different shape, size, composition, etc. Traditionally, this technique was used for deposition of ceramics in water and in polar organic solvents such as acetone or alcohols. Recently, it was expanded to various nanoscale materials including quantum dots (QD) and composites. The method is advantageous as it allows manipulating different types of nanocrystals into large-scale final products and results in (uniform) films, for example for application in solar cells.

In the presented work, we exploit control over particle size, concentration, dispersant composition (polar to non-polar solvents ratio), and deposition temperature to gain new insights into the deposition mechanism of a stable organic-phase colloidal CdSe QD model system.