Abstract
Currently, intensive research efforts focus on the fabrication of meso-structures of assembled colloidal quantum dots (QDs) with original optical and electronic properties. Such collective features originate from the QDs coupling, depending on the number of connected units and their distance. However, the development of general methodologies to assemble colloidal QD with precise stoichiometry and particle-particle spacing remains a key challenge. Here, we demonstrate that dimers of CdSe QDs, stable in solution, can be obtained by engineering QD surface chemistry, reducing the surface steric hindrance and favoring the link between two QDs. The connection is made by using alkyl dithiols as bifunctional linkers and different chain lengths are used to tune the interparticle distance from few nm down to 0.5 nm. The spectroscopic investigation highlights that coupling phenomena between the QDs in dimers are strongly dependent on the interparticle distance and QD size, ultimately affecting the exciton dissociation efficiency.
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Acknowledgements
This work is financially supported by the H2020 FET project COPAC (Contract agreement n.766563).
The MIUR PRIN 2015 n. 2015XBZ5YA is also acknowledged.
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Dibenedetto, C.N., Fanizza, E., Brescia, R. et al. Coupling effects in QD dimers at sub-nanometer interparticle distance. Nano Res. 13, 1071–1080 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-2747-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-2747-3
Keywords
- quantum dots
- dimers
- surface chemistry
- dithiols
- coupling