Proceedings of nanoGe Spring Meeting 2022 (NSM22)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.nsm.2022.085
Publication date: 7th February 2022
Nanoparticles and their assemblies offer unique properties, which are highly related to their composition, size, shape[1] and - for assemblies - to their nature of connection[2],[3]. By connecting CdSe/CdS (NR) dot-in-rod semiconductor nanoparticles into network structures, excited electrons can travel through the CdS shell while holes are trapped in the CdSe core region. In our work, we present an experimental approach to evaluate the spatial extent of fluorescence quenching due to the separation of the excited electrons and holes in the connected NR networks.[4] To extract this information, we perform photoluminescence spectroscopy (such as fluorescence lifetime and photoluminescence quantum yield measurements) on different types of materials, namely colloidal mixtures, hydrogels, lyogels and aerogels consisting of the semiconductor and a noble metal component. The ratio of the NRs and the Au nanoparticles (NP) attached to the NR semiconductor network is varied in a wide range. Thus, the scale of the electron travelling distances within the connected NR backbone upon using internal standards can be extracted from the macroscopic optical measurements.[4] One Au NP is able to quench the photoluminescence of several semiconductor NRs and can reach a number of nine NRs (roughly 400 nm connected CdS shell) quenched in the interconnected network.[4]
"The authors thank the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No 714429) for funding. In addition, this work received funding from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) under Germany's excellence strategy within the cluster of excellence PhoenixD (EXC 2122, project ID 390833453) and the grant BI 1708/4-1. P.B. is thankful for financial support from the Hannover School for Nanotechnology (HSN). D.D. would like to acknowledge the support by the German Research Foundation (DFG research Grant DO 1580/5-1). Moreover, the authors thank Prof. Denis Gebauer for providing the ICP-OES facility at the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry (LUH) and Kirsten Eiben for the technical assistance. Prof. Peter Behrens would like to thank the Cluster of Excellence EXC 1077/1 “Hearing4all” funded by DFG."[4]