With high quality and in high yield: The synthesis presented here affords CdSe and CdTe semiconductor nanocrystals without the need of a precursor injection. It allows the detailed control of the size and shape of the nanocrystals, as can be seen from the tetrahedral CdSe nanocrystals that have been prepared (TEM image). The method is suitable for industrial‐scale preparations.

In this paper, we report a new doping approach using a three-step synthesis to make high-quality Mn-doped CdS/ZnS core/shell nanocrystals. This approach allows precise control of the Mn radial position and doping level in the core/shell nanocrystals. On the basis of this synthetic advance, we have demonstrated the first example in which optical properties of Mn-doped nanocrystals strongly depend on Mn radial positions inside the nanocrystals. In addition, we have synthesized nanocrystals with a room-temperature Mn-emission quantum yield of 56%, which is nearly twice as high as that of the best Mn-doped nanocrystals reported previously. Nanocrystals with such a high-emission quantum yield are very important to applications such as nanocrystal-based biomedical diagnosis.

Lithium ion batteries cannot meet the ever increasing demands of human society. Thus batteries with Li-metal anodes are eyed to revive. Here we summarize the recent progress in developing practical Li-metal anodes for various Li-based batteries.

This paper presents a mechanistic study on the doping of CdS/ZnS core/shell semiconductor nanocrystals with Mn based on a three-step synthesis, which includes host-particle synthesis, Mn-dopant growth, and ZnS-shell growth. We used a combination of electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy (EPR) and inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP) to monitor Mn-doping level and growth yield during doping synthesis at both the dopant-growth and ZnS-shell-growth steps. First, our kinetic study shows that Mn adsorption onto the nanocrystal surface includes the formation of weakly and strongly bound Mn. The formation of weakly bound Mn is associated with a chemical equilibrium between adsorbed Mn species on the nanocrystal surface and free Mn species in growth solution, while the formation of strongly bound Mn exhibits first-order kinetics with an activation-energy barrier of 211 +/- 13 kJ/mol. Second, our results demonstrate that both weakly and strongly bound Mn can be removed from the surface of nanocrystals during ZnS-shell growth. The replacement of strongly bound Mn requires a higher temperature than that of weakly bound Mn. The yield of the replacement of strongly bound Mn is strongly dependent on the temperature of ZnS-shell growth. Third, our results show that the Mn-growth yield is not dependent on the size and crystal structure of nanocrystals. All together, these results suggest a mechanism in which nanocrystal doping is determined by the chemical kinetics of three activation-controlled processes: dopant adsorption, replacement, and ZnS-shell growth.

Quality and quantity: A non‐injection synthesis of high‐quality CdSe nanocrystals can be conducted in air, that is without the need for any oxygen‐free manipulation. The synthesis, which uses SeO2 as the selenium precursor, is suitable for the large‐scale industrial synthesis of high‐quality nanocrystals at low cost and has been generalized for the formation of other metal selenides, such as PbSe and Pd4.5Se nanocrystals.