The development of non-toxic, cost-effective and eco-friendly semiconductor nanocrystals (NCs)
for opto-electronic applications has become a major scientific challenge with great potential
economic outcomes. This project aims at exploring the chalcogenide perovskite family to produce
new generation of clean and earth abundant NCs with tunable band-gaps. The chalcogenide
perovskites (ABX3) NCs will be synthesized by combining group IIA (Ca, Sr, Ba), IVB (Ti, Zr, Hf) and
VIA (S, Se) elements via bottom up colloidal approach. These novel semiconductors are predicted
to have high carrier mobility and direct band gap comparable to traditional semiconductors which
make them attractive for PV and optoelectronics. They have only been made in bulk form and, for
their synthesis as NCs, in depth research on precursor choice, reaction kinetics and surface
chemistry is needed. First a detailed screening of synthesis routes will be done to find promising
combination of metals and chalcogen to optimize the NC synthetic protocol in view of band-gap
tuning. The opto-electronic properties will be thoroughly analysed; based on which possible
exploitation of the NCs in applications e.g., phosphors, photodetectors will be assessed. The focus
on synthesis, characterization and application of novel NCs makes it a multidisciplinary project and
development of these NCs can bring a breakthrough in semiconductor research which will find
direct implementation in academic and industrial R&D units.