Frontiers in Nanotechnology Seminar Series Presents, Uri Banin from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

“Colloidal Semiconductor Quantum Dots: From Artificial Atoms to Designer Molecules”

Colloidal semiconductor quantum dots offer precise control over size, composition, and surface properties, making them valuable building blocks for displays, lasers, light-emitting diodes, photodetectors, and quantum technologies. In this lecture, Banin will show how researchers can move beyond individual quantum dots by linking and fusing them into coupled colloidal quantum dot molecules, or CQDMs, with two interacting light-emitting centers.

These designer structures exhibit electronic behavior unlike that of their individual components, including instantaneous color switching in response to an electric field without sacrificing intensity. Banin will discuss how CQDMs can be engineered to emit distinct colors and how that control could support electric field sensors, new pixel architectures for displays and tunable photon sources.

Get to know Uri

Uri Banin is a professor at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he holds the Alfred and Erica Larisch Memorial Chair. He was the founding director of the university’s Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology and studies the chemistry, physics and applications of nanocrystal quantum dots. He is known for developing new semiconductor quantum dots and hybrid semiconductor metal nanocrystals.

Banin founded Qlight Nanotech, which advanced the use of quantum dots in displays and was acquired by Merck in 2015. He has published more than 260 papers, holds more than 30 patents and has received honors including the Israel Chemical Society Prize of Excellence and the 2024 Rothschild Prize in Chemical Sciences. He also has received two European Research Council Advanced Grants.