Center for Integration of Modern Optoelectronic Materials on Demand (IMOD), NSF STC

Grateful for our collaborative team of students, faculty, postdocs, staff, and partners who make IMOD a special community for researching quantum dot optoelectronics and training the next generation of scientists and engineers. Happy Thanksgiving!

Industrial Internships are a great way for graduate students to gain valuable experience and broaden their horizons. Not only can they develop new skills, expand their network, and learn more about what a career in industry really feels like, but they can also get hands-on meaningful experiences with cutting-edge research. Julisa Juarez, a graduate student in the Ginger Group at the University of Washington, a core team in IMOD, spent the summer of 2024 at Tandem PV, a leader in the development of next generation solar cells. Check out this short video to find out more about her experience and how this has informed her approach to research in grad school.

A new paper in Science Magazine led by Justin Ondry and the Dmitri Talapin lab at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago describes a novel method of synthesizing #quantumdots that unlocks exciting new combinations of elements! Materials found in the third and fifth groups of the periodic table are used in the most efficient solar cells, brightest LEDs, most powerful semiconductor lasers, and fastest electronic devices. QDs made of III-V or "three-five" materials have similarly exciting potential applications, but, with few exceptions, III-V QDs were impossible to make because the temperatures required are too high for the organic solvents used in conventional QD synthesis. By replacing organic solvents with molten salts that can handle temperatures over 425°C, the researchers were able to demonstrate nearly a dozen new varieties of III-V quantum dots. Congratulations to other IMOD co-authors including Zirui Zhou, Sadegh Yazdi, Gordana Dukovic, Eran Rabani! IMOD supported direct QD synthesis and electron microscope imaging. National Science Foundation (NSF) David Ginger

The type of semiconductive nanocrystals known as quantum dots are both expanding the forefront of pure science and also hard at work in practical applications including lasers, quantum QLED televisions and displays, solar cells, medical devices, and other electronics.

Congratulations to Professor Rigoberto Hernandez, a member of IMOD's External Advisory Committee, on his election as 2025 president-elect of the American Chemical Society! He will assume the role of ACS president in 2026 and immediate past president in 2027, serving on the ACS board of directors 2025–2027.

Announced this week! Mercouri Kanatzidis has been awarded the 2025 ACS Award in the Chemistry of Materials, recognizing creative work in materials research. Congratulations Mercouri!

Each year IMOD awards a number of Seed grants to promote new thinking and new research in the optoelectronics community. This year we have five exciting projects that we are looking forward to collaborating upon. Welcome to the 2024 IMOD seed class! Find out more here: https://buff.ly/3yVEze4

Out last week, this collaborative article that includes the Rappe IMOD team, published in Science Advances, describes the discovery of enhanced structural properties in single layer hybrid perovskites: https://buff.ly/4czxQnV

Just out in Nature Comms, this collaborative investigation that leverages the theoretical know-how of the IMOD Rappe Group, explores how you can control the surfaces and interfaces of perovskites and the impact this has on the efficiency and robustness of the optoelectronic material: https://buff.ly/4dLuyio

The IMOD team are partners on two recently funded NSF PREM Awards. We are super excited to connect in to these fantastic communities!