1. Introduction

Since the invention of the transistor and the development of the semiconductor industry, microelectronics has been marked by a race to miniaturize components. This race follows Moore's Law, which predicts that the size of an electronic component decreases by a factor of two every six years. With current advances in lithography techniques, production etch sizes of around 14 nm were reached in 2014 (nanometer ≡ nm for short, 1 nm = 10 ^-9 m or one billionth of a meter). Components of this size are made up of a countable number of atoms: quantum effects become important and give rise to particular physical properties. The study of the properties of these nano-objects is the field of nanoscience, which has seen spectacular growth worldwide over the last ten years.

The fluorescent semiconductor nanocrystals (quantum dots)...