Vanishing of the Mott transition in semiconductor nanocrystals

The dynamics of the system of photoexcited electron–hole pairs in semiconductor nanocrystals of different size with increasing excitation intensity was experimentally studied by utilizing the luminescence spectra of semiconductor-doped glasses in order to elucidate the peculiarities of many-body effects in structures approaching the zero-dimensional limit. Vanishing of effects causing the Mott transition in bulk crystals was observed with decreasing nanocrystal radius, and a new type of transformation of excitons to unbound electron–hole pairs was shown to take place in nanocrystals where the energy shift for electrons and holes due to quantum confinement becomes comparable with the exciton binding energy.