Ligand bonding and dynamics on colloidal nanocrystals at room temperature: The case of alkylamines on CdSe nanocrystals

With CdSe nanocrystals stabilized with very weak ligands (pyridine) as the starting materials, NMR techniques were applied to distinguish the bonded and free alkylamine ligands in an equilibrated adsorption/desorption system for the CdSe-amine nanocrystal-ligand pair. NMR and photoluminescence (PL) measurements were further correlated to identify the linear relationship between PL intensity and the surface ligand coverage of the amine-coated CdSe nanocrystals. For 3.5 nm CdSe nanocrystals and octylamine ligands, the chemical equilibrium constant (K) of the CdSe-amine nanocrystal-ligand adsorption/desorption process was found to be around 50-100, and the corresponding Delta(r)G degrees was calculated as 9.8-11.5 kJ/mol. With a proposed mathernatic method, the corresponding chemical kinetic constants for the desorption (k(d)) and adsorption (k(a)) processes were measured to be 0.01 s(-1) and 0.5 L mol(-1) s(-1), respectively. K, k(d), and k(a) obtained here are generally 2-4 magnitudes different from those estimated in literature. Analysis indicates that these constants are well consistent with the existing experimental observations.