John A. McGuire

Single-exciton optical gain in semiconductor nanocrystals

Nanocrystal quantum dots have favourable light-emitting properties. They show photoluminescence with high quantum yields, and their emission colours depend on the nanocrystal size—owing to the quantum-confinement effect—and are therefore tunable. However, nanocrystals are difficult to use in optical amplification and lasing. Because of an almost exact balance between absorption and stimulated emission in nanoparticles excited with single electron–hole pairs (excitons), optical gain can only occur in nanocrystals that contain at least two excitons. A complication associated with this multiexcitonic nature of light amplification is fast optical-gain decay induced by non-radiative Auger recombination, a process in which one exciton recombines by transferring its energy to another. Here we demonstrate a practical approach for obtaining optical gain in the single-exciton regime that eliminates the problem of Auger decay. Specifically, we develop core/shell hetero-nanocrystals engineered in such a way as to spatially separate electrons and holes between the core and the shell (type-II heterostructures). The resulting imbalance between negative and positive charges produces a strong local electric field, which induces a giant (∼100 meV or greater) transient Stark shift of the absorption spectrum with respect to the luminescence line of singly excited nanocrystals. This effect breaks the exact balance between absorption and stimulated emission, and allows us to demonstrate optical amplification due to single excitons.

Triplet States and Electronic Relaxation in Photoexcited Graphene Quantum Dots

Electronic relaxation in photoexcited graphenes is central to their photoreactivity and their optoelectrical applications such as photodetectors and solar cells. Herein we report on the first ensemble studies of electronic energy relaxation pathways in colloidal graphene quantum dots with uniform size. We show that the photoexcited graphene quantum dots have a significant probability of relaxing into triplet states and emit both phosphorescence and fluorescence at room temperature, with relative intensities depending on the excitation energy. Because of the long lifetime and reactivity of triplet electronic states, our results could have significant implications for applications of graphenes.

Apparent Versus True Carrier Multiplication Yields in Semiconductor Nanocrystals

Generation of multiple electron-hole pairs (excitons) by single photons, known as carrier multiplication (CM), has the potential to appreciably improve the performance of solar photovoltaics. In semiconductor nanocrystals, this effect usually has been detected using a distinct dynamical signature of multiexcitons associated with their fast Auger recombination. Here, we show that uncontrolled photocharging of the nanocrystal core can lead to exaggeration of the Auger decay component and, as a result, significant deviations of the apparent CM efficiencies from their true values. Specifically, we observe that for the same sample, apparent multiexciton yields can differ by a factor of approximately 3 depending on whether the nanocrystal solution is static or stirred. We show that this discrepancy is consistent with photoinduced charging of the nanocrystals in static solutions, the effect of which is minimized in the stirred case where the charged nanocrystals are swept from the excitation volume between sequential excitation pulses. Using side-by-side measurements of CM efficiencies and nanocrystal charging, we show that the CM results obtained under static conditions converge to the values measured for stirred solutions after we accurately account for the effects of photocharging. This study helps to clarify the recent controversy over CM in nanocrystals and highlights some of the issues that must be carefully considered in spectroscopic studies of this process.

Ultrafast Vibrational Dynamics at Water Interfaces

Time-resolved sum-frequency vibrational spectroscopy permits the study of hitherto neglected ultrafast vibrational dynamics of neat water interfaces. Measurements on interfacial bonded OH stretch modes revealed relaxation behavior on sub-picosecond time scales in close resemblance to that of bulk water. Vibrational excitation is followed by spectral diffusion, vibrational relaxation, and thermalization in the hydrogen-bonding network. Dephasing of the excitation occurs in ≤100 femtoseconds. Population relaxation of the dangling OH stretch was found to have a time constant of 1.3 picoseconds, the same as that for excitation transfer between hydrogen-bonded and unbonded OH stretches of water molecules surrounded by acetone.

A reduction pathway in the synthesis of PbSe nanocrystal quantum dots

Colloidal nanocrystal quantum dots (NQDs) of narrow band gap materials are of substantial general interest because of their unparalleled potential as infrared fluorophores. While PbSe NQDs are a promising class of infrared-active nanocrystals due to high emission quantum yields and a wide useful spectral range, typical synthetic methods are sensitive to a variety of factors, including the influence of solvent/ligand impurities that render reproducibility difficult. In this work, we specifically examine the effects of diphenylphosphine and 1,2-hexadecanediol, as surrogates for putative trioctylphosphine-based reducing impurities, on the synthesis of PbSe NQDs. Specifically, we compare their influence on NQD size, chemical yield, and photoluminescence quantum yield. While both additives substantially increase the chemical yield of the synthesis, they demonstrate markedly different effects on emission quantum yield of the product NQDs. We further examine the effects of reaction temperature and oleic acid concentration on the diol-assisted synthesis. Increased oleic acid concentration led to somewhat higher growth rates and larger NQDs but at the expense of lower chemical yield. Temperature was found to have an even greater effect on growth rate and NQD size. Neither temperature nor oleic acid concentration was found to have noticeable effects on NQD emission quantum yield. Finally, we use numerical simulations to support the conjecture that the increased yield is likely a result of faster monomer formation, consistent with the activation of an additional reaction pathway by the reducing species.

Spectroscopic signatures of photocharging due to hot-carrier transfer in solutions of semiconductor nanocrystals under low-intensity ultraviolet excitation.

We show that excitation of solutions of well-passivated PbSe semiconductor nanocrystals (NCs) with ultraviolet (3.1 eV) photons can produce long-lived charge-separated states in which the NC core is left with a nonzero net charge. Since this process is not observed for lower-energy (1.5 eV) excitation, we ascribe it to hot-carrier transfer to some trap site outside the NC. Photocharging leads to bleaching of steady-state absorption, partial quenching of emission, and additional fast time scales in carrier dynamics due to Auger decay of charged single- and multiexciton states. The degree of photocharging, f, saturates at a level that varies from 5 to 15% depending on the sample. The buildup of the population of charged NCs is extremely slow indicating very long, tens of seconds, lifetimes of these charge-separated states. Based on these time scales and the measured onset of saturation of f at excitation rates around 0.05-1 photon per NC per ms, we determine that the probability of charging following a photon absorption event is of the order of 10(-4) to 10(-3). The results of these studies have important implications for the understanding of photophysical properties of NCs, especially in the case of time-resolved measurements of carrier multiplication.

Slow colloidal growth of PbSe nanocrystals for facile morphology and size control

We report colloidal growth of PbSe nanosheets and finely size-tuned PbSe nanocrystals (NCs) via simple control of reaction parameters. The approach involves slow injection of precursors with excess amounts of oleic acid. Retarded growth, due to both the slow supply of precursors and the surfeit of oleic acid, causes attachment of PbSe NCs through the (110) planes, which are more reactive than the (100) facet, into a two-dimensional geometry. In contrast, such attachment processes can be prevented by impurities, e.g., Cd chalcogenide (CdSe or CdS) NCs dispersed in chloroform. For instance, the slow injection of Pb and Se precursors into a reaction solution containing Cd chalcogenide NCs results in the growth of spherical PbSe NCs, as the Cd chalcogenide NCs hinder the PbSe nuclei from merging via (110) planes. Compared to conventional rapid-injection methods, PbSe NCs grow slowly, which enables fine control of NC size. Ab initio calculations suggest that Cd precursors strongly bound on the surface of PbSe NCs may impede nanosheet formation and may slow PbSe NC growth.

Signal and noise in fourier-transform sum-frequency surface vibrational spectroscopy with femtosecond lasers

We describe theory and experiment for Fourier-transform sum-frequency surface vibrational spectroscopy using femtosecond lasers and discuss some practical issues in comparing it with the multichannel dispersive sum-frequency generation approach to obtain sub-laser-linewidth resolution in vibrational spectra. A signal-to-noise ratio analysis shows that the former is inferior for several inherent reasons if infrared and visible pulses used are derived from a typical 1 kHz femtosecond oscillator-amplifier system.

Orientational Dynamics of Water at an Extended Hydrophobic Interface

We report on the orientational dynamics of water at an extended hydrophobic interface with an octadecylsilane self-assembled monolayer on fused silica. The interfacial dangling OH stretch mode is excited with a resonant pump, and its evolution followed in time by a surface-specific, vibrationally resonant, infrared-visible sum-frequency probe. High sensitivity pump-probe anisotropy measurements and isotopic dilution clearly reveal that the decay of the dangling OH stretch excitation is almost entirely due to a jump to a hydrogen-bonded configuration that occurs in 1.61 ± 0.10 ps. This is more than twice as fast as the jump time from one hydrogen-bonded configuration to another in bulk H2O but about 50% slower than the reported out-of-plane reorientation at the air/water interface. In contrast, the intrinsic population lifetime of the dangling OH stretch in the absence of such jumps is found to be >10 ps. Molecular dynamics simulations of air/water and hexane/water interfaces reproduce the fast jump dynamics of interfacial dangling OH with calculated jump times of 1.4 and 1.7 ps for the air and hydrophobic interfaces, respectively. The simulations highlight that while the air/water and hydrophobic/water surfaces exhibit great structural similarities, a small stabilization of the OH groups by the hydrophobic interface produces the pronounced difference in the dynamics of dangling bonds.

Optical and spin polarization dynamics in GaSe nanoslabs

We report nearly complete preservation of “spin memory” between optical absorption and photoluminescence (PL) in nanometer slabs of GaSe pumped with 0.2 eV excess energy. At cryogenic temperatures, the initial degree of circular polarization (ρ0) of PL approaches unity, with the major fraction of the spin polarization decaying with a time constant >500 ps in sub-100-nm GaSe nanoslabs. Even at room temperature, ρ0 as large as 0.7 is observed, while pumping 1 eV above the band edge yields ρ0 = 0.15. Angular momentum preservation for both electrons and holes is due to the separation of the non-degenerate conduction and valence bands from other bands. In contrast to valley polarization in atomically thin transition metal dichalcogenides, here optical spin polarization is preserved in nanoslabs of 100 layers or more of GaSe.