Abstract
Cesium lead halide perovskites exhibit outstanding optical and electronic properties for a wide range of applications in optoelectronics and for light-emitting devices. Yet, the physics of ...the band-edge exciton, whose recombination is at the origin of the photoluminescence, is not elucidated. Here, we unveil the exciton fine structure of individual cesium lead iodide perovskite nanocrystals and demonstrate that it is governed by the electron-hole exchange interaction and nanocrystal shape anisotropy. The lowest-energy exciton state is a long-lived dark singlet state, which promotes the creation of biexcitons at low temperatures and thus correlated photon pairs. These bright quantum emitters in the near-infrared have a photon statistics that can readily be tuned from bunching to antibunching, using magnetic or thermal coupling between dark and bright exciton sublevels.
We report a time-resolved study of the photoluminescence of CdSe colloidal nanoplatelets with two different thicknesses. By studying the exciton recombination dynamics we assess the exciton fine ...structure in these systems. The splitting between bright and dark excitons is enhanced compared to epitaxial quantum well structures as result of dielectric confinement. Despite of strong variations in the absolute magnitude, by comparison with literature data we find a relatively slightly varying bright–dark exciton lifetime ratio in very different CdSe-based colloidal nanostructures, regardless of growth technique and of core and shell properties such as materials, dimensions, etc. This finding points to a universal mechanism in the dark exciton recombination.
The surface of nominally diamagnetic colloidal CdSe nanoplatelets can demonstrate paramagnetic behaviour owing to the uncompensated spins of dangling bonds, as we reveal here by optical spectroscopy ...in high magnetic fields up to 15 T using the exciton spin as a probe of the surface magnetism. The strongly nonlinear magnetic field dependence of the circular polarization of the exciton emission is determined by the magnetization of the dangling-bond spins (DBSs), the exciton spin polarization as well as the spin-dependent recombination of dark excitons. The sign of the exciton-DBS exchange interaction depends on the nanoplatelet growth conditions.
We report on a temperature-, time-, and spectrally resolved study of the photoluminescence of type-I InP/ZnS colloidal nanocrystals with varying core size. By studying the exciton recombination ...dynamics we assess the exciton fine structure in these systems. In addition to the typical bright–dark doublet, the photoluminescence stems from an upper bright state in spite of its large energy splitting (∼100 meV). This striking observation results from dramatically lengthened thermalization processes among the fine structure levels and points to optical-phonon bottleneck effects in InP/ZnS nanocrystals. Furthermore, our data show that the radiative recombination of the dark exciton scales linearly with the bright–dark energy splitting for CdSe and InP nanocrystals. This finding strongly suggests a universal dangling bonds-assisted recombination of the dark exciton in colloidal nanostructures.
We report on a time-resolved study of the photoluminescence of core/shell CdSe/CdS dot-in-rod colloidal nanocrystals having various geometries. By studying the exciton recombination dynamics, we ...unveil a quadratic dependence of the bright–dark exciton energy splitting and the dark exciton radiative recombination rate on the inverse CdS rod width, regardless of the CdSe core size. We also evidence a strong dependence of the spin-flip rate between bright and dark exciton states on the shell thickness that suggests an acoustic phonon bottleneck. This work highlights the possibility to fully control and tune the optical properties of colloidal nanocrystals by shape engineering of the CdS shell.
Germanane is a two-dimensional material consisting of stacks of atomically thin germanium sheets. It's easy and low-cost synthesis holds promise for the development of atomic-scale devices. However, ...to become an electronic-grade material, high-quality layered crystals with good chemical purity and stability are needed. To this end, we studied the electrical transport of annealed methyl-terminated germanane microcrystallites in both high vacuum and ultrahigh vacuum. Scanning electron microscopy of crystallites revealed two types of behavior which arise from the difference in the crystallite chemistry. While some crystallites are hydrated and oxidized, preventing the formation of good electrical contact, the four-point resistance of oxygen-free crystallites was measured with multiple tips scanning tunneling microscopy, yielding a bulk transport with resistivity smaller than 1 Ω·cm. When normalized by the crystallite thickness, the resistance compares well with the resistance of hydrogen-passivated germanane flakes found in the literature. Along with the high purity of the crystallites, a thermal stability of the resistance at 280 °C makes methyl-terminated germanane suitable for complementary metal oxide semiconductor back-end-of-line processes.
The low-temperature emission spectrum of CdSe colloidal nanoplatelets (NPLs) consists of two narrow lines. The high-energy line stems from the recombination of neutral excitons. The origin of the ...low-energy line is currently debated. We experimentally study the spectral shift, emission dynamics, and spin polarization of both lines at low temperatures down to 1.5 K and in high magnetic fields up to 60 T and show that the low-energy line originates from the recombination of negatively charged excitons (trions). This assignment is confirmed by the NPL photocharging dynamics and associated variations in the spectrum. We show that the negatively charged excitons are considerably less sensitive to the presence of surface spins than the neutral excitons. The trion binding energy in three-monolayer-thick NPLs is as large as 30 meV, which is 4 times larger than its value in the two-dimensional limit of a conventional CdSe quantum well confined between semiconductor barriers. A considerable part of this enhancement is gained by the dielectric enhancement effect, which is due to the small dielectric constant of the environment surrounding the NPLs.
Two-dimensional Mott materials have recently been reported in the dichalcogenide family with high potential for Mottronic applications. Nevertheless, their widespread use as a single or few layers is ...hampered by their limited device integration resulting from their growth on graphene, a metallic substrate. Here, we report on the fabrication of 1T-TaSe2 monolayers grown by molecular beam epitaxy on semiconducting gallium phosphide substrates. At the nanoscale, the charge density wave reconstruction and a moiré pattern resulting from the monolayer interaction with the substrate are observed by scanning tunneling microscopy. The fully open gap unveiled by tunneling spectroscopy, which can be further manipulated by the proximity of a metal tip, is confirmed by transport measurements from micrometric to millimetric scales, demonstrating a robust Mott insulating phase at up to 400 K.