Living Nanocrystals

The important properties of polymers and nanocrystals both depend upon the precise control of three-dimensional structure. Living polymerization has transformed polymer chemistry—providing absolute control over molecular weights, yielding monodisperse chains, and enabling the production of copolymers with specifically tailored properties. Despite the apparent analogies between polymerization of organic monomers and nanocrystal growth from inorganic monomers, living growth approaches to nanocrystals have been slower to develop. Living nanocrystal growth methods promise to provide exquisite control over core size, size dispersion, doped composition, and core/shell structure. As a result, they have the potential to advance the development of predictive structure/property relationships and afford a finer level of structural control during nanomaterial synthesis. In this perspective, we outline the essential attributes of living nanocrystal syntheses and discuss prerequisites required to discover and develop reactions with these types of mechanisms. Examples from the literature are reviewed that share some attributes of living growth methods (e.g., seeded growth methods) in an attempt to identify existing approaches that might meet the living growth prerequisites. We describe recent findings from our laboratory on metal oxide nanocrystal synthesis that exhibit all the key attributes of living growth. We demonstrate the potential of this method for enhanced structural and compositional control in nanocrystal growth through examples involving efficient dopant incorporation into a metal oxide framework, precise control of the radial distribution of dopant atoms, and the production of core/shell metal oxide nanocrystals. Finally, we outline exciting future prospects for discovery and development of living growth systems and point out important research avenues critical for development of the field.