Advances in green colloidal synthesis of metal selenide and telluride quantum dots

During the past three decades, metal selenide and telluride quantum dots (QDs) have been deemed one of the most vital nanomaterials in virtue of their extensive applications, including lighting, solar harvesting,photocatalysis, biolabelling, quantum computing and so forth. With the growing demands for the QDrelated products, environmental friendly, energy-efficient and timesaving approaches to synthesize functional metal selenide and telluride QDs are greatly welcome. On the basis of the development in synthesis of chalcogen precursors, this mini review summarizes the recent progress in the green methods for synthesizing metal selenide and telluride QDs. At first, the panorama of basic synthetic methodology of metal chalcogenide QDs is briefly introduced. Then, numerous evolving colloidal synthetic methods are discussed, highlighting the phosphine-free precursors and the aqueous ionic precursors. Finally, this review ends with remaining challenges and future prospects in synthetic schemes. We hope this review will provide some stimulating information to promote further advancement in this area.