Nanomaterials have emerged as an area of interest motivated by potential applications of these materials in light emitting diodes, solar cells, polarizers, light -stable colour filters, optical sensors, optical data communication and optical data storage. Nanomaterials are of particular interest as they combine the properties of two or more different materials with the possibility of possessing novel mechanical, electronic or chemical behaviour. Understanding and tuning such effects could lead to hybrid devices based on these nanocomposites with improved optical properties. We have prepared polymer nanocomposites of well-defined compositions and studied the optical properties of powders and their thin films. UV-vis absorption spectroscopy on nanocomposite powders and spectroscopic ellipsometry measurements on thin films was used to study the effect of interfacial morphology, interparticle spacing and finite size effects on optical properties of nanocomposites. Systematic shift in the imaginary part of the dielectric function can be seen with variation in size and fraction of the gold nanoparticle. The thickness of the film also plays a significant role in the tunability of the optical spectra.

Articles you may be interested inNon-radiative relaxation and rectification behavior of metal/semiconductor tetrapod heterostructures Appl. Phys. Lett. 104, 063110 (2014); 10.1063/1.4865398Precise control of photoluminescence enhancement and quenching of semiconductor quantum dots using localized surface plasmons in metal nanoparticles

We present results of photoluminescence spectroscopy and lifetime measurements on thin film hybrid arrays of semiconductor quantum dots and metal nanoparticles embedded in a block copolymer template. The intensity of emission as well as the measured lifetime would be controlled by varying the volume fraction and location of gold nanoparticles in the matrix. We demonstrate the ability to both enhance and quench the luminescence in the hybrids as compared to the quantum dot array films while simultaneously engineering large reduction in luminescence lifetime with incorporation of gold nanoparticles.

Thin films of hybrid arrays of cadmium selenide quantum dots and polymer grafted gold nanoparticles have been prepared using a BCP template. Controlling the dispersion and location of the respective nanoparticles allows us to tune the exciton-plasmon interaction in such hybrid arrays and hence control their optical properties. The observed photoluminescence of the hybrid array films is interpreted in terms of the dispersion and location of the gold nanoparticles and quantum dots in the block copolymer matrix.

We discuss experimental results on the ability to significantly tune the photoluminescence decay rates of CdSe quantum dots embedded in an ordered template, using lightly doped small gold nanoparticles (nano-antennae), of relatively low optical efficiency. We observe both enhancement and quenching of photoluminescence intensity of the quantum dots varying monotonically with increasing volume fraction of added gold nanoparticles, with respect to undoped quantum dot arrays. However, the corresponding variation in lifetime of photoluminescence spectra decay shows a hitherto unobserved, non-monotonic variation with gold nanoparticle doping. We also demonstrate that Purcell effect is quite effective for the larger (5 nm) gold nano-antenna leading to more than four times enhanced radiative rate at spectral resonance, for largest doping and about 1.75 times enhancement for off-resonance. Significantly for spectral off-resonance samples, we could simultaneously engineer reduction of non-radiative decay rate along with increase of radiative decay rate. Non-radiative decay dominates the system for the smaller (2 nm) gold nano-antenna setting the limit on how small these plasmonic nano-antennae could be to be effective in engineering significant enhancement in radiative decay rate and, hence, the overall quantum efficiency of quantum dot based hybrid photonic assemblies. V C 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.