ABSTRACT
This chapter concentrates on the application of tunneling and optical spectroscopy to colloidal grown quantum dots (QDs), with particular focus in the study of indium arsenide (InAs) nanocrytals and InAs cores coated by a semiconducting shell (core/shells). It gives a general comparison between tunneling and optical spectroscopy of QDs, and presents the specific application of this approach to InAs nanocrystals. The chapter discusses the effects of the tunnel junction parameters on the measured tunneling spectra. It focuses on the synthesis of core/shell QDs with InAs cores, and also presents their optical and tunneling properties. The chapter also discusses the wavefunction imaging of electronic states in QDs. Tunneling and optical spectroscopy are two complementary methods for the study of the electronic properties of semiconductor QDs. For a discrete QD level structure, the spectra exhibit a sequence of peaks corresponding to resonant tunneling through the states.
