Tunable dual emission in type-I/type-II CdSe/CdS/ZnSe nanocrystals

We have used wet chemical methods to fabricate colloidal CdSe/CdSm/ZnSen core/intermediate/shell (C/I/S) nanocrystals (NCs), where m = 1 and 2 and n = 1–4 are the number of monolayers. The growth was monitored by using Raman and UV–vis spectroscopy, which demonstrated the formation of correct CdSe/CdSm/ZnSen C/I/S NCs. X-ray diffraction studies proved single-phase NCs crystallized in the zincblende-type structure. Photoluminescence (PL) studies have indicated that after photoexcitation C/I/S NCs generate simultaneously type-I and type-II emissions, namely EI and EII, associated with CdSe/CdSm and CdSm/ZnSen structures, respectively. For a specific value of m = 2, we have found the redshift of both EI and EII emissions when n is increased from 1 to 4. The PL studies versus the laser-excitation power (Pex) up to about four orders of magnitude allow us to identify the origin of two emissions. A large blueshift of the EII peak is ascribed to the band bending effect resulting from the spatially separated photoexcited carriers in type-II NCs. It appears that the dependence of the EII peak on the cube root of Pex ( P e x 1 / 3 ) is linear while that of the EI peak on P e x 1 / 3 is almost constant. In this work, we also point out that the emission intensity (I) of EI and EII can be tuned by changing the values of n and Pex, where I obeys a power law I ∝ P e x k , with k = 0.7–1.0 dependent on the emission type. The nature of these phenomena is discussed in comparison with previous studies on C/S and C/I/S nanoheterostructures.