Environmental effects on photoluminescence of highly luminescent CdSe and CdSe/ZnS core/shell nanocrystals in polymer thin films

We report our systematic studies of the environmental effects on the photoluminescence (PL) from colloidal CdSe nanocrystals (NCs) embedded in polymer thin films. The highly luminescent bare-core CdSe NCs were significantly more robust than the core/shell CdSe/ZnS NCs against photoannealing under inert environments, while the core/shell NCs are more resistant to photooxidation. For the case of bare-core NCs, we show the importance of the initial photoactivation as the proper treatment for subsequent studies, a step that is basically irrelevant in the case of core/shell NCs. By measuring the PL wavelength shift, PL line width, and PL intensity, we investigated the dynamic changes of the emission properties of these NCs under different environments, including argon, oxygen, air, water vapor, and wet oxygen, and under different excitation conductions to reveal the photoinduced nature of the interactions between the nanocrystal surface and the environment. Mechanisms related to photoactivation, photooxidation, and PL enhancement are briefly discussed.