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We report on the optical absorption properties, measured by the photoacoustic (PA) method, and photoelectrochemical current (PEC) characteristics (including transient measurements) of CdSe quantum dots (Q-dots) grafted onto a planar fluorine-doped SnO2 (FTO) substrate. CdSe Q-dots were fabricated by the chemical solution deposition (CD) technique. With increasing deposition time, the redshift of the PA spectra can be clearly observed and optical absorption in the visible region due to CdSe Q-dots can be demonstrated. The average diameters of the CdSe Q-dots for each deposition time can be estimated using an effective mass approximation producing diameters of 5.1 nm to 5.6 nm for deposition times of 5 h to 25 h, respectively. Thus, PA spectroscopy is useful in obtaining the Q-dots sizes even though there is no use of a high-resolution scanning electron microscope (SEM). An increase in PEC and the clear shift of the spectra to the lower energy region are observed with increasing deposition time, indicating the photosensitization of the FTO electrodes in the visible region resulting from CdSe Q-dots. It can be seen that the maximum value of incident photon to current conversion efficiency (IPCE) is ∼10%, which is higher than that previously reported (∼6%). Transient PEC measurements show that electron recombination in a smaller amount of CdSe Q-dots is lower than that in a higher amount of Q-dots.

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Semiconductor particles with sizes of the order of a few nanometers in a glass matrix show very attractive properties completely different from bulk materials. They show promise both for the basic study of the three-dimensional confinement in semiconductors and for applications in the field of optoelectronics devices for switching, optical signal processing, solar energy conversion, and so on. The study of optical properties, especially optical absorption properties, is most important to understand the behavior of semiconductor nanocrystals. In general, the absorption spectra can be measured by the usual transmitted absorption measurement method, but it needs the samples to be made thin enough and have good quality surfaces by pretreatment. The photoacoustic (PA) method is one of photothermal detection, and it has proved to be useful for investigating optical absorption and thermal properties of various materials by measuring nonradiative processes. In this study, we studied the change in the electronic state due to size confinement for CdTe nanocrystals embedded in a GeO2 glass matrix by PA spectroscopy. The samples were prepared in two steps. First, base glass was produced by heating a mixture of GeO2 (0.91 mol %), NaGeO3 (0.09 mol %), and CdTe (5 wt %) powders up to 600 °C by 40 min and keeping at 600 °C for 12 h, and then heating up to 1180 °C for 5 h, keeping at 1180 °C for 4 h, and finally cooling in water. The CdTe nucleus was formed during this process. Second, the base glasses were annealed at 525 °C from 15 to 120 min to obtain various average sizes of CdTe nanocrystals. The PA intensity gradually increases towards higher energy regions at about 3.25 eV for all samples, probably due to the optical absorption of GeO2 base glasses. New peaks appeared at about 2.41 and 1.85 eV in the PA signal intensity spectra for the samples annealed for 30 and 60 min, respectively. These peaks correspond to the optical absorption of the CdTe nanocrystals in the glasses. The absorption edges and peaks shift to lower energy regions with the increase of annealing time. The average nanocrystal radii were estimated to be 3.5 and 5.5 nm in the two annealed samples from the PA spectra.