Dusty plasma for nanotechnology

Over the years dust particles formed in plasmas and used for microelectronic technologies were considered as an important source of irremediable defects. They grow in the gas phase through homogeneous chemical reactions and remain trapped in the plasma gas phase due to the negative charge they acquire by electron attachment. The earlier formed particles are, under certain conditions, crystallites of 2 to 4 nm in diameter when operating at room temperature. These nanocrystallites can be used as quantum dots for many applications in nanoelectronics (single electron devices, etc), photoluminescent devices, optical amplification and biomedical applications. We show here that dusty plasmas can be a very efficient tool for the synthesis of these nano-objects. Using its physical properties we showed that it is possible to control the synthesis of nanocrystallites or nanoparticles with well-defined sizes. The sizes of the earlier nanocrystallites can also be tuned by varying the plasma physical parameters.