Continuous flow purification of nanocrystal quantum dots

Colloidal quantum dot (QD) purification is typically conducted via repeating precipitation–redispersion involving massive amounts of organic solvents and has been the main obstacle in mass production of QDs with dependable surface properties. Our results show that the electric field apparently affects the streamlining of QDs and that we could continuously collect stably dispersed QDs by the electrophoretic purification process. The purification yield increases as the electric potential difference increases or the flow rate decreases, but reaches an asymptotic value. The yield can be further improved by raising the absolute magnitude of the mobility of QDs with the addition of solvents with high dielectric constants. The continuous purification process sheds light on industrial production of colloidal nanomaterials.