Hydrophobic lead sulfide quantum dots (PbS/OA) synthesized in the presence of oleic acid were transferred from nonpolar organic solvents to polar solvents such as alcohols and water by a simple ligand exchange with poly(acrylic acid) (PAA). Ligand exchange took place rapidly at room temperature When a colloidal solution of PbS/OA in tetrahydrofuran (THF) was treated with excess PAA, the PbS/PAA nanocrystals that formed were insoluble in hexane and toluene but could be dissolved in methanol or water, where they formed colloidal solutions that were stable for months. Ligand exchange was accompanied by a small blue shift in the band-edge absorption, consistent with a small reduction in particle size. While there was a decrease in quantum yield associated with ligand exchange and transfer to polar solvents, as is commonly found for colloidal quantum dots, the quantum yields determined were impressively high: PbS/OA in toluene (82%) and in THF (58%); PbS/PAA in THF (42%) and in water (24%). The quantum yields for the PbS/PAA solutions decreased over time as the solutions were allowed to age in the presence of air.
Fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) experiments were carried out on three pairs of donor-acceptor dyes in polymer films in which the donor dyes had absorption maxima in the range of 350-450 nm. Two of the donors, a coumarin dye and a naphthalimide dye covalently bound to polystyrene, gave nonexponential decays in the absence of acceptors. The decay profiles could be fitted to a stretched exponential form with a beta value on the order of 0.9. We developed equations for analyzing donor fluorescence intensity decay profiles for donor-acceptor mixtures in rigid matrices for the case of donors showing relatively small deviations from exponentiality. To test these equations, we calculate values of the Förster radius (R0(FR)) from the decay profile data and compare these values to the Förster radius R0(SO) determined by the traditional spectral overlap method. Agreement between these values validates the methodology developed here for the use of such donor dyes in FRET studies of more complex polymer systems.
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