Mingxia Jiao,Yun Li,Yuxiu Jia,Zhen Yang,Xiliang Luo
Non-cadimum photoluminescent I−III−VI semiconductor nanocrystals have attracted increasing attention due to their low toxicity, extraordinary optical and electronic properties. Herein, water-soluble quaternary Cu-In-Zn-S quantum dots (CIZS QDs) with tunable emission from 535 nm to 645 nm were successfully synthesized via ecofriendly one-pot aqueous method. The full width at half-maximum (FWHM) of the emissions are about 68 nm–88 nm, which are rather narrow among Cu-based semiconductors and preferred to facilitate improving color purity. The photoluminescence of water-soluble QDs was enhanced by ZnS coating with the absolute quantum yield (QY) up to 30.8%. Further, a novel fluorescent sensor for Cu 2+ detection was developed based on the alteration of intrinsic optical properties of the CIZS/ZnS QDs after cation exchange at room temperature within 10 min, presenting a linear range of 0.020–20 μM and a detection limit down to 6.7 nM. Mechanism studies revealed that the QDs served as the template for cation exchange, through UV–vis absorption and fluorescence spectra in combination with the chemical composition and time-resolved photoluminescence decay analysis. Ions interference experiments demonstrated the good selectivity of the QDs towards Cu 2+ and the sensor showed comparable accuracy to ICP-AES method as well as good performance in real sample detection, manifesting the reliability of the current strategy for sensing Cu 2+ mildly and rapidly.
Zang Shuaipu,Zhang Xuhui,Sun Yingying,Li Ning,Wang Lei,Li Lin Song
Harnessing environment-friendly and low-cost multinary Cu-In-Zn-S quantum dots (QDs) as emitters for light-emitting diodes (LEDs) has attracted great attention for display and lighting application. However, suboptimal QD structure is a huge obstacle, which results in serious non-radiative recombination and efficiency roll-off. Herein, we synthesized structure-tailored Cu-In-Zn-S/ZnS//ZnS QDs by improving the reactivity of shell growth by 2-ethylhexanoic acid (EHA) ligands. The EHA-assisted shell growth can boost an extended alloyed layer at the core-shell interface and a smoothed confinement barrier, which effectively passivate the interface defects and suppress Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) process. These synthesized QDs display a bright photoluminescence emission (quantum yield of 83%) and a larger size of 8.4 nm. Moreover, the resulting LEDs based on the EHA-assisted QDs exhibit a maximum luminance of 8074 cd/m2, and a current efficiency of 7.3 cd/A with a low efficiency roll-off. Our results highlight a remarkable ligand strategy to tailor the QD structure for high performance QD-based LEDs.