techniques however the material may be put through these processes for a shorter period of time than typical of traditional methods and these more traditional methods could be in conjunction with the processes described herein a typical hold time for hot pressing or sps may be 5 minutes or greater while embodiments such as this may only require hold times of about half of this amount or less for example a cold pressed powder can be made into a pellet using a die in the cold press and then the pellet can be placed between the rams of an sps machine with or without a die and current can be passed through the pellet to enhance the electrical properties and increase the mechanical strength in another embodiment a method of making a material includes mixing the appropriate nanosized semiconductors together as a dry powder the above disclosed powders may include core or core shell semiconductor nanocrystals with or without a matrix material incorporated in the powder the final material may be stratified into different types of layers for instance by using the described powder and incorporating it into layers which contain variations in grain size composition of material amount or types of dopant and other similar variations for example one embodiment may include mixing 20 nm nanocrystals with a ball milled nano powder that has a large size distribution with sizes ranging from about 20 nm to about 2000 nm one method of using.