Abstract:
Over the past few years, there has been a rapid increase of activity in two frontier areas of
semiconductor research: dilute magnetic semiconductors (DMSs) and semiconductor
quantum dots (QDs). Doping of semiconductor nanocrystals by transition metal ions (DMS)
has attracted tremendous attention owing to their enhanced optical, magnetic and magnetooptical
properties like giant exciton Zeeman splitting, Faraday effect etc. Such doping is,
however, difficult to achieve in low-dimensional strongly quantum confined nanostructures
by conventional growth procedures and leads to problems like nanoscale clustering and
phase separation. Search for effective doping strategies can thus open up the possibility of
doping various strongly quantum confined nanocrystals for diverse applications. This
chapter reviews the field of “Dilute Magnetic Semiconductor Quantum Dots”. Concept of
doping and problems associated with the aggregation of magnetic dopants in nanocrystals
are discussed together with the mechanisms accounting for magnetism in dilute magnetic
semiconductors.
