Colloidal solution of boron and phosphorus codoped silicon quantum dots -from material development to applications

A core/shell silicon (Si) quantum dot (QD) composed of a crystalline Si core and an amorphous shell, in which boron (B) and phosphorus (P) are very heavily doped, is developed. Because of the amorphous shell, the B and P codoped Si QDs exhibit significantly different physical and chemical properties from undoped ones. The codoped Si QDs are dispersible in polar solvents such as water and alcohol without organic ligands and exhibit stable luminescence in water. Because of the superior properties, the codoped Si QDs have applications in different fields including photonics, biophotonics, photochemistry and electronics. In this article, we discuss the structure and optical and electrical properties of the codoped core/shell Si QDs and show the application potentials in different fields.