In Situ Observation of the Nucleation and Growth of CdSe Nanocrystals

An in situ method is introduced for the study of nucleation and growth of crystals using the size-dependent properties of a given system in the transition size regime from molecular species to bulk sized crystals. The real-time measurements for the first system studied, a CdSe one, were carried out by recording the absorption spectra during the reaction with a millisecond resolution.