Photoluminescence spectroscopy of single colloidal nanocrystals eliminates the inhomogeneous broadening effects of ensemble averaging, but conventional methods suffer from low temporal resolution, small sample sizes and selection bias. Photon-correlation Fourier spectroscopy performed in solution (Solution PCFS) offers an approach for probing the spectra of single nanocrystals devoid of these shortcomings. Solution PCFS reveals that room-temperature single-nanocrystal spectral linewidths can be highly variable between different core/shell particles and are uncorrelated with core size, shell morphology and core material composition. These results suggest that other parameters, perhaps universal to the colloidal quantum dot architecture, dominate the single-nanocrystal spectral linewidth and that it may be possible to synthesize core/shell particles of any core material composition with spectral breadths comparable to those observed in CdSe systems.

Exploring the photoluminescence spectrum of single nanocrystals in solution using photon-correlation Fourier spectroscopy

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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