Determination of particle size distribution of water-soluble CdTe quantum dots by optical spectroscopy

Abstract

In the present study, we report the synthesis of glutathione (GSH) capped CdTe quantum dots (QDs) using the one-pot approach as well as their optical properties. These QDs were used as a probe for a detailed quantitative correlation between spectroscopic data and QDs size dispersion. We have developed a spectroscopic method to determine the size dispersion of QDs in solution based on the fluorescence spectroscopy and the fluorescence quantum yields. Our results demonstrate that the one-pot approach produces GSH-capped CdTe QDs of narrow size dispersion, as inferred by the sharp line width (full width at half maximum) of the fluorescence signal (from 153 meV to 163 meV), as revealed by our spectroscopy method. We observed that the GSH-capped CdTe QDs cause an increase in fluorescence quantum yield from 11% to 30% concomitantly with an increase in lifetime decay from 38 to 50 ns during the course of synthesis (from 15 min to 120 min), indicating an increase in the average size of the QDs. Finally, we have used the evolving factor analysis together with the multivariate curve resolutionalternating least squares method to corroborate our results, and we found a good agreement between both methods with the advantage that in our method, we were able to obtain size dispersion rather than just the mean QD size.

Synthesis, Optical Characterization, and Size Distribution Determination by Curve Resolution Methods of Water-Soluble CdSe Quantum Dots

“…On average, [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35] emission spectra were collected for each CdSe QDs dispersion obtained at different synthesis time of reaction by varying the excitation wavelength by 5 nm. To include all the geometric characteristics of the emission spectrum, for each sample, the initial excitation wavelength was defined in such a way that recording of the emission spectra began between 50 and 60 nm before the emission increased sharply.…”

“…Recent works have highlighted this methodology. 28,30 Together, MCR-ALS [31][32][33] and EFA 34,35 are some of the most popular methods to deconvolution overlapping signals.…”

Impact of capping agent on the electron transfer dynamics of CdTe QDs with methyl viologen

“…2]. In addition, emission peaks are very sharp and narrow, which indicated that they had nearly monodisperse and uniformity in particle size [31], as already evidenced by TEM measurements [Fig. S2].…”

Synthesis and characterization of chitosan-based polyelectrolyte complexes, doped by quantum dots

“…No any pronounced effect of the encapsulation on the PL lifetime was observed. The difference in the lifetime values for two types of QDs (40 ns for CdTe and 13 ns for CdSe/ZnS) can be attributed to their different core size [10,11] due to the strong dependence of PL lifetimes of QDs on their size [12]. …”