Proceedings of MATSUS Spring 2025 Conference (MATSUSSpring25)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.matsusspring.2025.254
Publication date: 16th December 2024
Colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals are a candidate source of time-correlated and entangled photons through the cascaded radiative relaxation of multiexcitonic states (multiple excitons within the same nanocrystal). However, the efficient nonradiative Auger-Meitner decay of multiexcitons renders them mostly nonemissive. This limits not only potential uses but also their investigation, particularly their spectroscopy. I will present the heralded spectroscopy of three-photon cascades from triexcitons in giant CsPbBr3 nanocrystals at room temperature.[1] Heralded spectroscopy, realized previously in our group,[2] is a single-particle technique using a single-photon sensitive, 180-picosecond time-resolved spectrometer based on a single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) array. By post-selecting events of triple photon detections following a single laser pulse, we isolate the triexciton relaxation cascades. This allows us to resolve the weak binding energies associated with the triexciton and the biexciton emissions in the cascade (1.13 ± 0.27 and 0.46 ± 0.28 meV, respectively). Simultaneously, we measure the lifetime of each relaxation step individually, despite their high similarity (triexciton: 0.51 ± 0.08 ns, biexciton: 0.82 ± 0.11 ns, and exciton: 2.21 ± 0.17 ns). These nanocrystals also exhibit near unity values of the second- and third-order correlation functions, g(2)(0) = 0.97 ± 0.01 and g(3)(0,0) = 0.94 ± 0.02. Those weak exciton–exciton interactions are in accordance with the nanocrystals’ diameter of 26 nm, more than four times the exciton Bohr diameter in CsPbBr3 of 7 nm,[3] whereas stronger interaction and binding were previously found in smaller-size (6 nm edge) CsPbBr3 nanocrystals by our group, studying biexcitons using the same technique.[4] We also combine fluorescence lifetime analysis, photon statistics, and spectroscopy, to verify emission from a single emitter despite the high emission quantum yields of multiply excited states and the comparable emission lifetimes and energies of singly and multiply excited states. I will also compare the biexciton and exciton emission properties during fluctuations in the nanocrystal’s emissivity (“blinking” between on, gray, and off states). Such blinking is typically attributed to Auger-Meitner recombination with excess charges or to surface-trap recombination. I will present indications that blinking can change the multiexciton-to-exciton emission rate ratio, which could be a potential pathway toward control of the photon number statistics of multiexcitonic emission cascades. Finally, I will discuss how this effect changes in nanocrystals of different sizes.
MK and DN contributed equally to this work.