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Copyright 2004 by Marcel Dekker, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Copyright 2004 by Marcel Dekker, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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dependent fluorescence quenching and the coexistence of both triplet andpolaron species at long times indicate that a rich variety of competing physicalprocesses could be investigated with ultrafast transient absorption experiments.We have shown above that chemically sythesized quantum dots can actas good electron acceptors from organic materials. We will return to photoinducedcharge transfer in Section VI, where we describe photovoltaic devicesbased on composites of nanocrystals and conjugated polymers.V. CHARGE TRANSPORT IN NANOCRYSTAL FILMSCharge transport in quantum-dot systems has been a particularly vibrant areaof condensed-matter physics research. Coulomb blockade effects, resonanttunneling, and single-electron transistors have all been studied in quantumdots forged with sophisticated electron beam lithography and molecularbeam epitaxy (MBE) techniques [74,75]. To observe these unique effectshowever, the available thermal energy, k B T, must be smaller than the relevantenergy level scale (Coulomb charging energy and quantum level spacing) inthe quantum dot. For lithographically patterned dots, this often demandsworking at sub-Kelvin temperatures. Nanocrystals are particularly attractivefor these studies because chemical routes can prepare smaller quantum dotswith larger energy spacings than are otherwise obtainable (the single-electroncharging energy of a small CdSe nanocrystal can exceed 100 meV, whereas thespacings between the quantized conduction band levels can exceed 500 meV).There have been several exciting articles exploring the charge transportproperties of single nanocrystals, including the demonstration of a CdSenanocrystal single-electron transistor [7,76] and STM conductance spectroscopyon the levels in CdSe [77–79] and InAs [80,81] nanocrystals.Arrays of chemically synthesized quantum dots are also interestingfor transport studies. Not only can the properties of the constituent particlesbe tuned through quantum-size effects, but the collective properties of thearray can be adjusted <strong>by</strong> controlling the interparticle coupling and order. Adramatic demonstration of this was provided <strong>by</strong> Health and co-workers whenthey drove a reversible metal–insulator transition in a monolayer of silvernanocrystals through compression and rarefaction on a Langmuir trough[82,83]. In addition, collective charge transport in nanoscale arrays has beenproposed as an experimentally accessible model for emergent phenomenain complex granular systems [23]. It has even been suggested that chargetransport in quantum-dot arrays might ultimately be used to perform computations[84]. In yet another application, nanocrystal–nanocrystal chargehopping is critical to the operation of the highly disorded TiO 2 electrodes<strong>Copyright</strong> <strong>2004</strong> <strong>by</strong> <strong>Marcel</strong> <strong>Dekker</strong>, <strong>Inc</strong>. <strong>All</strong> <strong>Rights</strong> <strong>Reserved</strong>.

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