Colloidal nanoplatelets (NPLs) have recently emerged as favorable light-emitting materials, which also show great potential as optical gain media due to their remarkable optical properties. In this work, we systematically investigate the optical gain performance of CdSe core and CdSe/CdS core/crown NPLs having different CdS crown size with one- and two-photon absorption pumping. The core/crown NPLs exhibit enhanced gain performance as compared to the core-only NPLs due to increased absorption cross section and the efficient interexciton funneling, which is from the CdS crown to the CdSe core. One- and two-photon absorption pumped amplified spontaneous emission thresholds are found as low as 41 μJ/cm(2) and 4.48 mJ/cm(2), respectively. These thresholds surpass the best reported optical gain performance of the state-of-the-art colloidal nanocrystals (i.e., quantum dots, nanorods, etc.) emitting in the same spectral range as the NPLs. Moreover, gain coefficient of the NPLs is measured as high as 650 cm(-1), which is 4-fold larger than the best reported gain coefficient of the colloidal quantum dots. Finally, we demonstrate a two-photon absorption pumped vertical cavity surface emitting laser of the NPLs with a lasing threshold as low as 2.49 mJ/cm(2). These excellent results are attributed to the superior properties of the NPLs as optical gain media.

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Colloidal semiconductor quantum wells, also commonly known as nanoplatelets (NPLs), have arisen among the most promising materials for light generation and harvesting applications. Recently, NPLs have been found to assemble in stacks. However, their emerging characteristics essential to these applications have not been previously controlled or understood. In this report, we systematically investigate and present excitonic properties of controlled column-like NPL assemblies. Here, by a controlled gradual process, we show that stacking in colloidal quantum wells substantially increases exciton transfer and trapping. As NPLs form into stacks, surprisingly we find an order of magnitude decrease in their photoluminescence quantum yield, while the transient fluorescence decay is considerably accelerated. These observations are corroborated by ultraefficient Forster resonance energy transfer (FRET) in the stacked NPLs, in which exciton migration is estimated to be in the ultralong range (>100 nm). Homo-FRET (i.e., FRET among the same emitters) is found to be ultraefficient, reaching levels as high as 99.9% at room temperature owing to the close-packed collinear orientation of the NPLs along with their large extinction coefficient and small Stokes shift, resulting in a large Forster radius of similar to 13.5 nm. Consequently, the strong and long-range homo-FRET boosts exciton trapping in nonemissive NPLs, acting as exciton sink centers, quenching photoluminescence from the stacked NPLs due to rapid nonradiative recombination of the trapped excitons. The rate-equation-based model, which considers the exciton transfer and the radiative and nonradiative recombination within the stacks, shows an excellent match with the experimental data. These results show the critical significance of stacking control in NPL solids, which exhibit completely different signatures of homo-FRET as compared to that in colloidal nanocrystals due to the absence of inhomogeneous broadening

Here, we systematically investigated the spontaneous and stimulated emission performances of solution-processed atomically flat quasi-2D nanoplatelets (NPLs) as a function of their lateral size using colloidal CdSe core NPLs. We found that the photoluminescence quantum efficiency of these NPLs decreases with increasing lateral size while their photoluminescence decay rate accelerates. This strongly suggests that nonradiative channels prevail in the NPL ensembles having extended lateral size, which is well-explained by the increasing number of the defected NPL subpopulation. In the case of stimulated emission the role of lateral size in NPLs influentially emerges both in the single- and two-photon absorption (1PA and 2PA) pumping. In the amplified spontaneous emission measurements, we uncovered that the stimulated emission thresholds of 1PA and 2PA exhibit completely opposite behavior with increasing lateral size. The NPLs with larger lateral sizes exhibited higher stimulated emission thresholds under 1PA pumping due to the dominating defected subpopulation in larger NPLs. On the other hand, surprisingly, larger NPLs remarkably revealed lower 2PA-pumped amplified spontaneous emission thresholds. This is attributed to the observation of a "giant" 2PA cross-section overwhelmingly growing with increasing lateral size and reaching record levels higher than 10(6) GM, at least an order of magnitude stronger than colloidal quantum dots and rods. These findings suggest that the lateral size control in the NPLs, which is commonly neglected, is essential to high-performance colloidal NPL optoelectronic devices in addition to the vertical monolayer control.

Doping of bulk semiconductors has revealed widespread success in optoelectronic applications. In the past few decades, substantial effort has been engaged for doping at the nanoscale. Recently, doped colloidal quantum dots (CQDs) have been demonstrated to be promising materials for luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) as they can be engineered for providing highly tunable and Stokes-shifted emission in the solar spectrum. However, existing doped CQDs that are aimed for full solar spectrum LSCs suffer from moderately low quantum efficiency, intrinsically small absorption cross-section, and gradually increasing absorption profiles coinciding with the emission spectrum, which together fundamentally limit their effective usage. Here, the authors show the first account of copper doping into atomically flat colloidal quantum wells (CQWs). In addition to Stokes-shifted and tunable dopant-induced photoluminescence emission, the copper doping into CQWs enables near-unity quantum efficiencies (up to ≈97%), accompanied by substantially high absorption cross-section and inherently step-like absorption profile, compared to those of the doped CQDs. Based on these exceptional properties, the authors have demonstrated by both experimental analysis and numerical modeling that these newly synthesized doped CQWs are excellent candidates for LSCs. These findings may open new directions for deployment of doped CQWs in LSCs for advanced solar light harvesting technologies.

There has been a strong interest in solution-processed two-dimensional nanomaterials because of their great potential in optoelectronics. Here, the absorption cross-section and molar extinction coefficient of four and five monolayer thick colloidal CdSe nanoplatelets (NPLs) having various lateral sizes are reported. The absorption cross-section of these NPLs and their corresponding molar extinction coefficients are found to strongly depend on the lateral area. An excellent agreement is observed between the experimental results and the calculated values based on the small-particle light absorption model. With these optical properties, NPLs hold great promise for optoelectronic applications. © 2015 American Chemical Society