Highly Emissive Nano Rod-in-Rod Heterostructures with Strong Linear Polarization

We report the synthesis of CdSe/CdS rod in rod core/shell heterostructures. These rods, synthesized using a seeded-growth approach, show narrow distributions of rod diameters and lengths and exhibit high emission quantum efficiencies and highly polarized emission. The degree of polarization is controlled by the inner core rod dimensions, and it is equal or up to 1.5 times higher than the polarization of equivalent sphere in rod systems. Using the method of photoselection we measure the polarization anisotropy at different excitation wavelengths and study the interplay between electronic contribution and dielectric effects in determining the absorption and emission polarization.