N-Bromosuccinimide-based bromination and subsequent functionalization of hydrogen-terminated silicon quantum dots

We report a mild, effective, room-temperature method for brominating and functionalizing colloidal hydrogen-terminated silicon quantum dots (H-SiQDs) using N-bromosuccinimide (NBS) as the bromination reagent. This post-synthesis bromination overcomes a long-standing challenge of producing emissive SiQDs through the functionalization of directly synthesized halogen-terminated colloidal SiQDs.