(289c) Development of Microfluidic Reactors for Quantum Dot Synthesis

 Vivek Kumar, Matt S. Naughton and Paul J. A. Kenis

Department ofChemical & Biomolecular Engineering,

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,

600 S. Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.

Section: Microreaction Engineering

Session: 20008

Quantum dots show promise in multiple applications such as medical imaging, quantum computing, and solid-state lighting due to significantly higher photoluminescence and better spectral behavior. However, high production costs greatly inhibit their widespread usage. These costs are due in part to a lack of reliable methods for the production of high quality, monodisperse quantum dots.  

More recently, high temperature synthetic methods have increased reaction yield and reduced size dispersion compared to the low temperature synthetic methods [1]. However, conventional batch synthetic techniques suffer from low reproducibility of size, dispersity in size and batch-to-batch variation of nanomaterial quality [2].  Microfluidic reactors, due to uniform mixing, provide a great improvement over these conventional batch synthetic techniques. High temperature multi-step flow reactors have shown preliminary success in obtaining high size monodispersity [3, 4]. Also, quality of quantum dots has been improved by the use of segmented microfluidic reactors [5].

Here, we present our work on the development of a microfluidic reactor to synthesize quantum dots. We compare the physical and optical properties of quantum dots produced in these microreactors (continuous flow) to the ones produced via conventional routes (batch).

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[3] H. Wang, X. Li, M. Uehara, Y. Yamaguchi, H. Nakamura, M. Miyazaki, H. Shimizu, H. Maeda, Chemical Communications, 2004, 48-49

[4] H. Yang, W. Luan, S. T. Tu, Z. M. Wang, Lab on a Chip, 2008, 451-455

[5] I. Shestopalov, J. D. Tice, R. F. Ismagilov, Lab on a Chip, 2004, 4,  316-321