Bright CdSe/CdS Quantum Dot Light-Emitting Diodes with Modulated Carrier Dynamics via the Local Kirchhoff Law

Type-I CdSe@CdS@ZnS Heterostructured Nanocrystals with Long Fluorescence Lifetime

Conventional single-component quantum dots (QDs) suffer from low recombination rates of photogenerated electrons and holes, which hinders their ability to meet the requirements for LED and laser applications. Therefore, it is urgent to design multicomponent heterojunction nanocrystals with these properties. Herein, we used CdSe quantum dot nanocrystals as a typical model, which were synthesized by means of a colloidal chemistry method at high temperatures. Then, CdS with a wide band gap was used to encapsulate the CdSe QDs, forming a CdSe@CdS core@shell heterojunction. Finally, the CdSe@CdS core@shell was modified through the growth of the ZnS shell to obtain CdSe@CdS@ZnS heterojunction nanocrystal hybrids. The morphologies, phases, structures and performance characteristics of CdSe@CdS@ZnS were evaluated using various analytical techniques, including transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, UV-vis absorption spectroscopy, fluorescence spectroscopy and time-resolved transient photoluminescence spectroscopy. The results show that the energy band structure is transformed from type II to type I after the ZnS growth. The photoluminescence lifetime increases from 41.4 ns to 88.8 ns and the photoluminescence quantum efficiency reaches 17.05% compared with that of pristine CdSe QDs. This paper provides a fundamental study and a new route for studying light-emitting devices and biological imaging based on multicomponent QDs.

A Parabola-like Gold Nanobowtie on a Sapphire Substrate as a Nano-Cavity

Plasmonic, metallic nanostructures have attracted much interest for their ability to manipulate light on a subwavelength scale and for their related applications in various fields. In this work, a parabola-like gold nanobowtie (PGNB) on a sapphire substrate was designed as a nano-cavity for confining light waves in a nanoscale gap region. The near-field optical properties of the innovative PGNB structure were studied comprehensively, taking advantage of the time-resolved field calculation based on a finite-difference time-domain algorithm (FDTD). The calculation result showed that the resonance wavelength of the nano-cavity was quite sensitive to the geometry of the PGNB. The values that related to the scattering and absorption properties of the PGNB, such as the scattering cross section, absorption cross section, extinction cross section, scattering ratio, and also the absorption ratio, were strongly dependent on the geometrical parameters which affected the surface area of the nanobowtie. Increased sharpness of the gold tips on the parabola-like nano-wings benefited the concentration of high-density charges with opposite electric properties in the narrow gold tips with limited volume, thus, resulting in a highly enhanced electric field in the nano-cavity under illumination of the light wave. Reduction of the gap size between the two gold nano-tips, namely, the size of the nano-cavity, decreased the distance that the electric potential produced by the highly concentrated charges on the surface of each gold nano-tip had to jump across, therefore, causing a significantly enhanced field in the nano-cavity. Further, alignment of the linearly polarized electric field of the incident light wave with the symmetric axis of the PGNB efficiently enabled the free electrons in the PGNB to concentrate on the surface of the sharp gold tips with a high density, thus, strongly improving the field across the nano-cavity. The research provides a new insight for future design, nanofabrication, and characterization of PGNBs for applications in devices that relate to enhancing photons emission, improving efficiency for energy harvesting, and improving sensitivity for infrared detection.