Energy transfer in nanostructured materials
Date
2014
Authors
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Energy transport and loss are critical to the performance of optoelectronic devices such as photovoltaics and terahertz imaging devices. Nanostructured materials provide many opportunities to tailor transport and loss parameters for specific device applications. However, it has been very difficult to correlate specific nanoscale structural parameters with changes in these performance metrics. I report the development of new ways of using time-resolved photoluminescence (TRPL) to probe charge and energy transport and loss dynamics. These techniques are applied to several types of nanostructured materials, including bulk semiconductors with defects, self-assembled quantum dots and colloidal quantum dots. First, GaAs/InP double heterostructures grown via metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) were characterized with TRPL. TRPL is typically used to extract minority carrier lifetimes, but we discovered that the measured lifetime depended critically on the intensity of the exciting laser. We developed a Shockley-Read-Hall model to extract trap state densities from intensity-dependent TRPL measurements. Second, we characterized energy and charge transfer between InAs quantum dots and ErAs nanoinclusions within III-V heterostructures. Using intensity- and temperature-dependent TRPL, we confirmed tunneling as the dominant mechanism of charge transport and characterized the electronic structure of the ErAs nanoparticles. Finally, we characterized energy transport in colloidal quantum dot cascade structures. These cascade structures utilize Forster Resonance Energy Transfer and trap state recycling to funnel excitons from donor layers to acceptor layers and suggest a promising method for avoiding losses associated with surface trap states. Collectively, the analysis of these disparate material types advances our understanding of energy dynamics in nanostructured materials and improves our ability to design the next generation of photovoltaic and optoelectronic materials and devices.