Optical properties of colloidal semiconductor quantum dots in dielectric media: A natural potential well approach

Colloidal quantum dots exhibit size-dependent optical properties due to quantum and dielectric confinements at the semiconductor/solvent boundary. To consider both confinement effects, we take a natural potential well approach that assumes separate potential wells for electron and hole which are surrounded by dielectric media. The potential well depths for electron and hole are set by the band offsets at the semiconductor/solvent heterojunction. The kinetic energy is calculated using an effective mass approximation and the electron-hole interaction energy is obtained by taking image charges into account. For cadmium chalcogenides, resulting transition energies agree well with size-dependent optical bandgaps from experiments. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.