Fabrication

Lithographic techniques Electron beam lithography is the practice of emitting a beam of electrons in a patterned fashion across a surface covered with a film (called the resist), ("exposing" the resist) and of selectively removing either exposed or non-exposed regions of the resist ("developing"). The purpose is to create very small structures in the resist that can subsequently be transferred to the substrate material, often by etching. The electron beam is usually emitted from a highbrightness cathode or a field emission gun and focused on the substrate. Computer control is employed to scan the beam over the surface and to define the image

CVD and MBE

Quantum dots within semiconductor materials have attracted particular attention because of the possibility of integrating dots with novel or superior properties. Currently, quantum dot layers are being investigated for use in semiconductor lasers. Carrier confinement in such devices is achieved by embedding a smaller band gap material within a larger band gap material. Such confinement is routinely performed in one dimension by growing very thin, planar films using well established technologies for thin film growth, such as chemical vapour deposition (CVD) or

 molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). In a typical CVD process, the wafer (substrate) is exposed to one or more volatile precursors, which react and/or decompose on the substrate surface to produce the desired deposit ( here quantum dots). MBE is a method of laying down layers of materials with atomic thicknesses on to substrates. This is done by creating a 'molecular beam' of a material which impinges on to the substrate. These methods allow practical control of layer thicknesses with accuracies on Angstrom scale. Achieving confinement in all three dimensions requires lateral control on the same 1-100 nm length scale, and is much more difficult. For example, standard UV lithography cannot yet produce such small features. While more exotic lithographic techniques such as x-ray lithography or electron beam writing have adequate resolution to patter quantum dots they are relatively expensive

Self assembly technique

Because of the difficulty of quantum dots fabrication using conventional techniques, a variety of alternatives have been investigated in which nano sized particles form naturally and self assemble as a kinetic or thermodynamic response to their environment, Eg. Silicon layers that are buried at precisely controlled depth within SiO2 , either by implantation or by layered film growth, coalese into clusters with extremely narrow size distributions upon annealing

Organic synthesis
Bawandi et al first developed this method using dimethyl cadmium Cd(CH3)2 which acts as the cadmium precursor. The method entails pyrolysis to make quantum dots by injecting organometallic reagents into hot coordination fluid (300C) such as triocytlphosphine (TOP) and triocytlphosphine oxide (TOPO), which are used as capping reagents and the reaction medium. These hydrophobic organic molecules prevents the formation of bulk semiconductor formation by coordination with the unsaturated metal atoms on the surface of quantum dots. The TOPO and TOP organic ligands in the inner surface of quantum dots are important for maintaining the optical properties of the dot and also protects the core from the medium. The quantum yield of quantum dots made from this method range from 50% to 80% and the quantum dots have good crystallinity and are free of surface defects.

 However Cd(CH3)2 is toxic, unstable, expensive, pyrophoric, and explosive at temperatures higher than room temperature which makes the fabrication of quantum dots dangerous and expensive. Peng et al were able to improve upon the method of Bawandi by replacing Cd(CH3)2 with CdO as the Cd precursor which produced reproducible results favorable for industrial production scale up. Using this method, addition of tellurium, selenium, and sulfur stock can yield CdTe, CdSe, and CdS quantum dots. The organic synthesis of quantum dots also poses the problem of being insoluble in water and unable to be used in vivo. The surface capping molecules such as TOPO needs to be replaced before their use in a biological system. The size of the quantum dot is determined by the precursor amount and crystal growth time

Traditional aqueous synthesis

Aqueous synthesis entails mixing metallic salts such as cadmium salts with NaHTe or NaHSe and thiol compounds as capping reagents. Quantum dots that are able to be fabricated using this method is CdSe, CdTe, and HgTe, but quantum yields for these dots are smaller compared to those prepared through organic synthesis. Also the particles do not possess the high crystallinity seen in organically prepared quantum dots, but the procedure is simpler, inexpensive, and more reproducible than organic synthesis. In addition to the above limitations of this technique, the method takes a long time in the reaction phase from about several hours to several days. The synthesis time can be greatly shortened and the quantum yield increased by using higher temperatures utilizing such devices such as autoclaves and microwaves