Highly Stable, Near-Unity Efficiency Atomically Flat Semiconductor Nanocrystals of CdSe/ZnS Hetero-Nanoplatelets Enabled by ZnS-Shell Hot-Injection Growth

Colloidal semiconductor nanoplatelets (NPLs) offer important benefits in nanocrystal optoelectronics with their unique excitonic properties. For NPLs, colloidal atomic layer deposition (c-ALD) provides the ability to produce their core/shell heterostructures. However, as c-ALD takes place at room temperature, this technique allows for only limited stability and low quantum yield. Here, highly stable, near-unity efficiency CdSe/ZnS NPLs are shown using hot-injection (HI) shell growth performed at 573 K, enabling routinely reproducible quantum yields up to 98%. These CdSe/ZnS HI-shell hetero-NPLs fully recover their initial photoluminescence (PL) intensity in solution after a heating cycle from 300 to 525 K under inert gas atmosphere, and their solid films exhibit 100% recovery of their initial PL intensity after a heating cycle up to 400 K under ambient atmosphere, by far outperforming the control group of c-ALD shell-coated CdSe/ZnS NPLs, which can sustain only 20% of their PL. In optical gain measurements, these core/HI-shell NPLs exhibit ultralow gain thresholds reaching approximate to 7 mu J cm(-2). Despite being annealed at 500 K, these ZnS-HI-shell NPLs possess low gain thresholds as small as 25 mu J cm(-2). These findings indicate that the proposed 573 K HI-shell-grown CdSe/ZnS NPLs hold great promise for extraordinarily high performance in nanocrystal optoelectronics

Highly flexible, electrically driven, top-emitting, quantum dot light-emitting stickers

Flexible information displays are key elements in future optoelectronic devices. Quantum dot light-emitting diodes (QLEDs) with advantages in color quality, stability, and cost-effectiveness are emerging as a candidate for single-material, full color light sources. Despite the recent advances in QLED technology, making high-performance flexible QLEDs still remains a big challenge due to limited choices of proper materials and device architectures as well as poor mechanical stability. Here, we show highly efficient, large-area QLED tapes emitting in red, green, and blue (RGB) colors with top-emitting design and polyimide tapes as flexible substrates. The brightness and quantum efficiency are 20 000 cd/m2 and 4.03%, respectively, the highest values reported for flexible QLEDs. Besides the excellent electroluminescence performance, these QLED films are highly flexible and mechanically robust to use as electrically driven light-emitting stickers by placing on or removing from any curved surface, facilitating versatile LED applications. Our QLED tapes present a step toward practical quantum dot based platforms for high-performance flexible displays and solid-state lighting. © 2014 American Chemical Society

Spectrally Tunable White Light-Emitting Diodes Based on Carbon Quantum Dot-Doped Poly(<i>N</i>‑vinylcarbazole) Composites

Electroluminescent white light-emitting diodes (WLEDs) are always of great interest for emerging display applications. Carbon-based quantum dots (CQDs) are the newest emerging nanoscale materials that can be employed for this purpose, owing to their broad and bright light emission properties. In the present work, highly luminescent CQDs with an emission quantum yield of 60% were prepared via a colloidal solvothermal method and subsequent silica gel column chromatography. The photoluminescence (PL) peak was located at 550 nm possessing yellow emission, with a full width at half-maximum of 98 nm and a relatively long lifetime of 10.23 ns through a single-exponential recombination pathway. CQDs were employed in an electroluminescent device architecture of an ITO/PEDOT:PSS/TFB/CQD:PVK/TPBi/LiF/Al structure and blended with poly(N-vinylcarbazole) (PVK) to evaluate their ability to reach white electroluminescent emission. Results confirmed a high external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 0.76% and a maximum luminescence of 774.3 cd·m–2. Tuning the ratio between CQDs and PVK from 1:10.25 to 1:5.75 resulted in a systematic shift in CIE x–y coordinates from 0.23–0.26 to 0.21–0.24, located close to the cool white region. The results of the present study can be considered a step forward in fabricating efficient WLEDs based on low-cost CQDs

Quantum dot-integrated LEDs using photonic and excitonic color conversion

Cataloged from PDF version of article.This review summarizes advantages, recent progress and challenges related to the quickly evolving research field of colloidal quantum dot integrated LEDs based on color conversion. We start with presenting a short general introduction to the field of solid state lighting and color conversion phenomena, which are essential for defining the requirements for high-quality general lighting. Subsequently we continue with a brief description of the synthesis of nanocrystal quantum dots and their optical properties together with the advantages of utilizing them in LEDs as color convertors. Following this basic background, we review the recent efforts on quantum dot integrated color-conversion LEDs, Forster resonance energy transfer (FRET) converted LEDs and FRET-enhanced LEDs. Finally, we conclude with a future outlook on semiconductor lighting and quantum dot integrated LEDs. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Tuning the Shades of Red Emission in InP/ZnSe/ZnS Nanocrystals with Narrow Full Width for Fabrication of Light-Emitting Diodes

While Cd-based luminescent nanocrystals (NCs) are the most mature NCs for fabricating efficient red light-emitting diodes (LEDs), their toxicity related limitation is inevitable, making it necessary to find a promising alternative. From this point of view, multishell-coated, red-emissive InP-based NCs are excellent luminescent nanomaterials for use as an emissive layer in electroluminescent (EL) devices. However, due to the presence of oxidation states, they suffer from a wide emission spectrum, which limits their performance. This study uses tris(dimethyl­amino)phosphine (3DMA-P) as a low-cost aminophosphine precursor and a double HF treatment to suggest an upscaled, cost-effective, and one-pot hot-injection synthesis of purely red-emissive InP-based NCs. The InP core structures were coated with thick layers of ZnSe and ZnS shells to prevent charge delocalization and to create a narrow size distribution. The purified NCs showed an intense emission signal as narrow as 43 nm across the entire red wavelength range (626–670 nm) with an emission quantum efficiency of 74% at 632 nm. The purified samples also showed an emission quantum efficiency of 60% for far-red wavelengths of 670 nm with a narrow full width of 50 nm. The samples showed a relatively long average emission lifetime of 50–70 ns with a biexponential decay profile. To demonstrate the practical ability of the prepared NCs in optoelectronics, we fabricated a red-emissive InP-based LEDs. The best-performing device showed an external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 1.16%, a luminance of 1039 cd m–2, and a current efficiency of 0.88 cd A–1