InP Quantum Dots: An Environmentally Friendly Material with Resonance Energy Transfer Requisites

Abstract

Growing demand for clean energy has intensified the interest in understanding the properties of environmentally friendly materials for future energy devices. Indium phosphide (InP) is relatively nontoxic as compared to cadmium chalcogenides, and herein we demonstrate the successful use of this material for resonance energy transfer applications. Three chromophoric dyes, namely, lissamine rhodamine B ethylene diamine (LiRh), Texas red cadavarine C5 (TxRed), and rhodamine 101 (Rh101), possessing free anchoring groups were used as acceptors in InP quantum dot (QD)-based donor−acceptor pairs. The energy transfer process was monitored by steady-state and time-resolved emission spectroscopic techniques. Large values of quenching constant (k q ), in the range of 10 13 −10 14 M −1 s −1 , observed on addition of chromophoric dyes to InP overcoated with zinc sulphide (InP/ZnS), confirm that the interaction is predominantly static in nature. Selective excitation of the QD component at 405 nm showed a rapid decay of InP/ZnS emission and a concomitant growth of the acceptor emission (rise time of ∼200 ps), indicating that all these systems follow a nonradiative energy transfer mechanism. Time-resolved emission studies confirm that the photoexcited InP/ZnS QDs decays to the ground state by transferring the excitation energy to the chromophoric dyes leading to the formation of its excited state. The high efficiency of energy transfer observed in these systems further confirms that InP is an excellent energy harvester with potential use in biomedical and photovoltaic applications.

CH3NH3PbBr3 Perovskite Nanocrystals as Efficient Light‐Harvesting Antenna for Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer

“…The spectral overlap was found to be almost similar for both PNC/RhB and PNC/Rh101 pairs with an overlap integral of 2.98×10 15 m −1 cm −1 nm 4 and 2.53×10 15 m −1 cm −1 nm 4 , respectively. These values are comparable to several quantum dot/organic dye FRET pairs reported in literature …”

Optical nonlinearities of colloidal InP@ZnS core-shell quantum dots probed by Z-scan and two-photon excited emission

“…11 The possibility to precisely control the size of both InP core and ZnS shell part of QDs, allowed for obtaining QDs with tunable emissions in the wavelength range between green and red. 12 Thomas et al 13 reported the use of InP QDs as efficient energy donors for resonance energy transfer based bio-related applications. The one-and two-photon excited emissions of InP@ZnS QDs have also been used for bioimaging of living cells.…”

Insight into the efficiency of oxygen introduced photodynamic therapy (PDT) and deep PDT against cancers with various assembled nanocarriers

“…The conjugates can form ROS when excited by an 800 nm twophoton laser, and the FRET efficiency is as high as 90% (Chou, Won, Kwag, Kim, & Chen, 2013). To avoid the cytotoxicity caused by Cd, Cd-free QDs such as InP/ZnS, Ag 2 S, and carbon nanodots were produced as PSs carriers (Gao, Wu, Deng, Wu, & Cai, 2016;Thomas, Nair, & George, 2014;. Other particles with large two-photon cross sections and emission quantum yield like gold nanostructures and carbon nanotubes could also be used as dots (Wang, Zhang, et al, 2014).…”