Ligand-assisted structure tailoring of highly luminescent Cu-In-Zn-S/ZnS//ZnS quantum dots for bright and stable light-emitting diodes.

Harnessing environment-friendly and low-cost multinary Cu-In-Zn-S quantum dots (QDs) as emitters for light-emitting diodes (LEDs) has attracted great attention for display and lighting application. However, suboptimal QD structure is a huge obstacle, which results in serious non-radiative recombination and efficiency roll-off. Herein, we synthesized structure-tailored Cu-In-Zn-S/ZnS//ZnS QDs by improving the reactivity of shell growth by 2-ethylhexanoic acid (EHA) ligands. The EHA-assisted shell growth can boost an extended alloyed layer at the core-shell interface and a smoothed confinement barrier, which effectively passivate the interface defects and suppress Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) process. These synthesized QDs display a bright photoluminescence emission (quantum yield of 83%) and a larger size of 8.4 nm. Moreover, the resulting LEDs based on the EHA-assisted QDs exhibit a maximum luminance of 8074 cd/m2, and a current efficiency of 7.3 cd/A with a low efficiency roll-off. Our results highlight a remarkable ligand strategy to tailor the QD structure for high performance QD-based LEDs.

Morphology Controlled Synthesis of Composition Related Plasmonic CuCdS Alloy Nanocrystals.

Cu-based ternary alloy nanocrystals have emerged for extensive applications in solar cells, light-emitting devices (LEDs), and photoelectric detectors because of their low-toxicity, tunable band gaps, and large absorption coefficients. It is still an enormous challenge that regulating optical and electrical properties through changing their compositions and shapes in alloy nanocrystals. Herein, we present a facile method to synthesize CuCdS alloy nanocrystals (NCs) with tunable compositions and shapes at relatively low temperature. Different morphologies of monodisperse CuCdS nanocrystals are tailored successfully by simply adjusting the reaction temperature and Cu:Cd precursor molar ratio. The as-synthesized nanocrystals are of homogeneous alloy structures with uniform obvious lattice fringes throughout the whole particles rather than heterojunction structures. The localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) absorption peaks of CuCdS NCs are clearly observed and can be precisely tuned by varying the Cu:Cd molar ratio. Moreover, current-voltage (I-V) behaviors of different shaped CuCdS nanocrystals show certain rectification characteristics. The alloy CuCdS NCs with tunable shape, band gap, and compositionpossess a potential application in optoelectronic devices.

Layer-by-Layer Assembly of Stable Aqueous Quantum Dots for Luminescent Planar Plate.

This work reports the fabrication of a luminescent planar plate based on stable aqueous quantum dots (QDs) and poly(diallyldimethylammonium chloride) (PDDA) via a layer-by-layer (LBL) assembly technique. Preparation of aqueous QDs with facile monoalkyl maleate amphiphilic surfactants as the coating agent is conducted by a robust and efficient phase-transfer method. The as-prepared aqueous QDs exhibit bright emission, and their surface has very large negative zeta potential values, which are useful for electrostatic LBL assembly. Red, green, and blue luminescent planar plates are successfully fabricated via LBL assembly of the monocolor QDs, respectively. Through accurately adjusting the relative proportion of each monocolor luminescent component, we obtain an inspiring luminescent planar plate, which emits bright white light with a color coordinate of (0.3509, 0.3483), a correlated color temperature (CCT) of 4766 K, and a high color rendering index (CRI, Ra) of 89.5 under the irradiation of UV light. Therefore, this paper reports a facile process for the design and preparation of luminescent planar plates, which have potential applications in display and solid-state lighting devices.

Bright, efficient, and color-stable violet ZnSe-based quantum dot light-emitting diodes.

In this paper, highly stable violet-blue emitting ZnSe/ZnS core/shell QDs have been synthesized by a novel "low temperature injection and high temperature growth" method. The resulting nearly monodisperse ZnSe/ZnS core/shell QDs exhibit excellent characteristics such as a high color saturation (typical spectral full width at half-maximum between 12 and 20 nm), good emission tunability in the violet-blue range of wavelengths from 400 to 455 nm, a high absolute PL quantum yield (up to 83%), and superior chemical and photochemical stability. By employing ZnSe/ZnS core/shell quantum dots (QDs) as emitters with a fully solution processable method, bright, efficient, and color-stable violet Cd-free quantum dot-based light-emitting diodes (QD-LEDs) with maximum luminance up to 2632 cd m(-2) and a peak EQE of 7.83% have been demonstrated successfully. Considering the factors of the photopic luminosity function, the brightness and efficiency results of such violet QD-LEDs not only represent a 12-fold increase in device efficiency and an extraordinary 100 times increase in luminance compared with previous Cd-free QD-LEDs but also can be much superior to the best performance (1.7%) of their Cd-based violet counterparts. These results demonstrate significant progress in short-wavelength QD-LEDs and shed light on the acceleration of commercial application of environmentally-friendly violet QD-based displays and lighting.