With a tunable size-dependent photoluminescence (PL) over a wide infrared wavelength range, lead chalcogenide quantum dots (QDs) have attracted significant scientific and technological interest. Nevertheless, the investigation of intrinsic exciton photophysics at the single-QD level has remained a challenge. Herein, we present a comprehensive study of PL properties for the individual core/shell PbS/CdS QDs emissive near 1.0 eV. In contrast to the sub-meV spectral line widths observed for II/VI QDs, PbS/CdS QDs are predicted to possess broad homogeneous line widths. Performing spectroscopy at cryogenic (4 K) temperatures, we provide direct evidence confirming theoretical predictions, showing that intrinsic line widths for PbS/CdS QDs are in the range of 8–25 meV, with an average of 16.4 meV. In addition, low-temperature, single-QD spectroscopy reveals a broad low-energy side emission attributable to optical as well as localized acoustic phonon-assisted transitions. By tracking single QDs from 4 to 250 K, we were able to probe temperature-dependent evolutions of emission energy, line width, and line shape. Finally, polarization-resolved PL imaging showed that PbS/CdS QDs are characterized by a 3D emission dipole, in contrast with the 2D dipole observed for CdSe QDs.

We study the exciton fine structure in quantum dots of multivalley lead chalcogenides. We demonstrate that intervalley electron−hole exchange interaction, ignored in previous studies, dramatically modifies the exciton fine structure and leads to appearance of the ultrabright valley-symmetric spin-triplet exciton state dominating interband optical absorption. Valley mixing leads to brightening of other symmetry-allowed spin-triplet states which dominate low-temperature photoluminescence.

Localization of charge carriers in monolayers (MLs) of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) dramatically increases spin and valley coherence times, and, by analogy with other systems, the role of the hyperfine interaction should enhance. We perform theoretical analysis of the intervalley hyperfine interaction in TMD MLs based on the group representation theory. We demonstrate, that the spin-valley locking leads to the helical structure of the in-plane hyperfine interaction. In the upper valence band the hyperfine interaction is shown to be of the Ising type, which can be used for fabrication of the atomically thin quantum dots with the long spin and valley coherence times.

We use an empirical tight-binding approach to calculate electron and hole states in [111]-grown PbSe nanowires. We show that the valley-orbit and spin-orbit splittings are very sensitive to the atomic arrangement within the nanowire elementary cell and differ for [111]-nanowires with microscopic $D_{3d}$, $C_{2h}$ and $D_{3}$ symmetries. For the nanowire diameter below 4 nm the valley-orbit splittings become comparable with the confinement energies and the $\boldsymbol{k}\cdot\boldsymbol{p}$ method is inapplicable. Nanowires with the $D_{3}$ point symmetry having no inversion center exhibit giant spin splitting $E = \alpha k_z$, linear in one-dimensional wave vector $k_z$, with the constant $\alpha$ up to 1 eV$\cdot$\AA.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figure