Suppression of Auger Recombination in Nanocrystals via Ligand-Assisted Wave Function Engineering in Reciprocal Space.

A limiting factor to the technological application of conventional semiconductor nanostructures is their fast Auger recombination time. Strategies to increase it have so far mostly focused on decreasing the electron-hole wave function overlap in real space through structural modifications involving either elongation or shell growth. Here we propose an alternative mechanism for Auger recombination suppression: a decrease in the overlap of electron and hole wave functions in reciprocal space.