Enhancement and Quenching Regimes in Metal-Semiconductor Hybrid Optical Nanosources

We report on the emission of hybrid nanosources composed of gold nanoparticles coupled with quantum dots. The emission relies on energy transfer from the quantum dots to gold nanoparticles which could be de-excited through radiative plasmon relaxation. The dependence of the emission efficiency is studied systematically as a function of the size of gold nanoparticles and interdistance between gold nanoparticles and quantum dots. We demonstrate a size-dependent transition between quenching and enhancement and a nonradiative energy transfer from the quantum dots to the gold nanoparticles.