Abstract: How can one understand the excited electronic states of a nanometer sized semiconductor crystallite, given that the crystallite structure is simply that of an excised fragment of the bulk lattice? This question is motivated by recent experiments on chemically synthesized "quantum crystallites," sometimes called "quantum dots," in which it is observed that the optical spectra are quite sensitive to size. For example, bulk crystalline CdSe is a semiconductor with an optical band gap at 690 nm, and continuous optical absorption at shorter waveleng...
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Topics: 
Quantum mechanics
Nanotechnology
Statistical physics