Crystallization Behaviors of PbSe Quantum Dots in Silicate Glasses

Abstract

This study, composed of three parts, aims at studying the crystallization behaviors of PbSe quantum dots (QDs) in silicate host glasses. Firstly, due to the importance of the choice of base glass for the QDs' crystallization, the selection of base glass compositions, the glass fragility, and glass formation ability (GFA) are discussed in details, and the results show that the selected glass compositions have an intermediate fragility and accordingly an intermediate glass transition temperature range among a wide variety of inorganic glass systems together with a good GFA/glass stability (GS). Thus, this base glass is suitable as the host glass in which PbSe QDs crystallize. Secondly, the experimental results on PbSe QDs' crystallizations are presented, and the results show that PbSe QDs can precipitate from silicate glasses favorably with no other chemical compounds precipitation, and the optimized temperature for PbSe QDs crystallization is 600°C. Lastly, the classical nucleation theory is used to analyze the PbSe QD crystallization behaviors in host glasses. The steady‐state nucleation rates and the growth rates of PbSe QDs as well as the time–temperature transformation (TTT) curves are calculated. The results indicate that the free surface energy between the PbSe nuclei and the host glass has great influence on the nucleation rates of PbSe QDs, while it has less effect on the growth rates of PbSe QDs; the crystallization behaviors of PbSe QDs with different volume fractions can be described well by the TTT curves while keeping the dimensionless empirical constant, α, unchanged for one certain curve.