Unexpected water explains surface chemistry of nanocrystals

Researchers have found unexpected traces of water in semiconducting nanocrystals that helps answer long-standing questions about their surface chemistry. The water as a source of small ions for the surface of colloidal lead sulfide (PbS) nanoparticles allowed the team to explain just how the surface of these important particles are passivated, meaning how they achieve an overall balance of positive and negative ions. This has been a big question for some fifteen years, and the answer washes up in hydroxyl groups from water that had been thought not to be there.

Read the whole article on Science Daily

More from Science Daily