Branched nanocrystal heterostructures synthesized from CdSe and CdTe exhibit a type II band structure alignment that induces separation of charge upon photoexcitation and localizes carriers to different regions of the tetrahedral geometry. The dynamics of carrier relaxation examined with femtosecond pump-probe spectroscopy showed heterostructures having rise times and biexponential decays longer than those of nanorods with similar dimensions. This is attributed to weaker interactions with surface states and nonradiative relaxation channels afforded by the type II alignment.

We fabricate ultrasmall phosphorene quantum dots (PQDs) with an average size of 2.6 ± 0.9 nm using a liquid exfoliation method involving ultrasound probe sonication followed by bath sonication. By coupling the as-prepared PQDs with microfiber evanescent light field, the PQD-based saturable absorber (SA) device exhibits ultrafast nonlinear saturable absorption property, with an optical modulation depth of 8.1% at the telecommunication band. With the integration of the all-fiber PQD-based SA, a continuous-wave passively mode-locked erbium-doped (Er-doped) laser cavity delivers stable, self-starting pulses with a pulse duration of 0.88 ps and at the cavity repetition rate of 5.47 MHz. Our results contribute to the growing body of work studying the nonlinear optical properties of ultrasmall PQDs that present new opportunities of this two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterial for future ultrafast photonic technologies.

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Nanojoining, a burgeoning research area, becomes a key manufacturing of complicated nanodevices with functional prefabricated components. In this work, various nanojoining methods are first reviewed. For nanojoining of Ag/Au nanoparticles, three methods are investigated comparatively. Thermal annealing shows a two-step solid state diffusion mechanism. Laser annealing by millisecond pulses displays the thermal activated solid state diffusion. Meanwhile, two effects have been identified in femtosecond laser irradiation with different laser intensities: photofragmentation at rather high intensity (∼1014 W/cm2) and nanojoining at low intensity (∼1010 W/cm2). The photofragmentation forms a large number of tiny nanoparticles with an average size of 10 nm. Control over irradiation conditions at intensities near 1010 W/cm2 results in nanojoining of most of the nanoparticles. This nanojoining is obtained through a nonthermal melting and a surface fusion welding. Joined Au nanoparticles are expected to have numerous applications, such as probes for surface enhance Raman spectroscopy.

Electron relaxation dynamics in CdS-Ag 2 S nanorods have been measured as a function of the relative fraction of the two semiconductors, which can be tuned via cation exchange between Cd 2+ and Ag + . The transient bleach of the first excitonic state of the CdS nanorods is characterized by a biexponential decay corresponding to fast relaxation of the excited electrons into trap states. This signal completely disappears when the nanorods are converted to Ag 2 S but is fully recovered after a second exchange to convert them back to CdS, demonstrating annealing of the nonradiative trap centers probed and the robustness of the cation exchange reaction. Partial cation exchange produces heterostructures with embedded regions of Ag 2 S within the CdS nanorods. Transient bleaching of the CdS first excitonic state shows that increasing the fraction of Ag 2 S produces a greater contribution from the fast component of the biexponential bleach recovery, indicating that new midgap relaxation pathways are created by the Ag 2 S material. Transient absorption with a mid-infrared probe further confirms the presence of states that preferentially trap electrons on a time scale of 1 ps, 2 orders of magnitude faster than that of the parent CdS nanorods. These results suggest that the Ag 2 S regions within the heterostucture provide an efficient relaxation pathway for excited electrons in the CdS conduction band.

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