Modeling the Role of Ligands in Controlling the Sizes, Shapes and Supramolecular Ordering of Quantum Dots

The density of electronic states controls many physical properties of a quantum dot and can be tuned by altering the dot's size, shape, or composition. In colloidal methods, ligands are used to control quantum dot size, shape, and polydispersity; however, there exists no a-priori means of describing specific conditions that will optimize the synthesis procedure. We apply a mean field theory to study the role of ligands in quantum dot synthesis with particular emphasis on non-spherical shapes. We examine the effects of ligand type and concentration on thermodynamic and structural properties, and compare our results with available data.