Sometime in the future, Silicon QD (SiQD) will be

Sometime in the future, Silicon QD (SiQD) will be ubiquitous in the forefront of technology -

Silicon Quantum Dots on Google Scholar

Quotes from Abstracts on this page:

Silicon based QDs are especially interesting as silicon is a highly abundant
element with a wide use in electronics, photovoltaics, and many other fields.

Spin qubits hosted in silicon (Si) quantum dots (QD)
are attractive due to their exceptionally long coherence
times and compatibility with the silicon transistor platform.

Here, we demonstrate the use of indirect-bandgap semiconductor nanostructures such as highly emissive silicon quantum dots. Silicon is non-toxic, low-cost and ultra-earth-abundant, which avoids the limitations to the industrial scaling of quantum dots composed of low-abundance elements.

Providing a spin-free host material in the development of quantum information technology has made silicon a very interesting and desirable material for qubit design. Much of the work and experimental progress has focused on isolated phosphorous atoms. In this article, we report on the exploration of Ni–Si clusters that are atomically manufactured via self-assembly from the bottom-up and behave as isolated quantum dots. These small quantum dot structures are probed at the atomic-scale with scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy, revealing robust resonance through discrete quantized energy levels within the Ni–Si clusters. The resonance energy is reproducible and the peak spacing of the quantum dot structures increases as the number of atoms in the cluster decrease. Probing these quantum dot structures on degenerately doped silicon results in the observation of negative differential resistance in both I–V and dI/dV spectra. At higher surface coverage of nickel, a well-known √19 surface modification is observed and is essentially a tightly packed array of the clusters. Spatial conductance maps reveal variations in the local density of states that suggest the clusters are influencing the electronic properties of their neighbors. All of these results are extremely encouraging towards the utilization of metal modified silicon surfaces to advance or complement existing quantum information technology.

In this paper we present recent advances in Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) sensing and bioimaging using nontoxic silicon quantum dots. (SiQDs) In our work, we prepare SiQDs-dye conjugates, with SiQDs serving as the donor which are covalently attached to organic dye acceptors via self-assembled monolayer linkers. Enzymatic cleavage of the peptide leads to changes in FRET response which was monitored using fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM-FRET). The combination of interfacial design and optical imaging presented in this work opens new opportunities for bio-applications using nontoxic silicon quantum dots.