Temperature-dependent photoluminescence of milled Cd0.3Zn0.7Se nanocrystals

Abstract Temperature-dependent photoluminescence (PL) in a range of 77 K to room temperature (RT, 300 K) and time-resolved PL spectroscopy (TRPL) were used to study mechanochemically alloyed Cd0.3Zn0.7Se nanocrystals. The opto-physical properties such as exciton decay dynamics and emission characteristics were investigated. TRPL has been used to probe carrier relaxation of defect-related emissions while PL was used to monitor the evolution of such defects with continuous milling time. The TRPL emissions exhibit bi-exponential decay dynamics consisting of an initial fast component over a range of 0.05 – 0.87 ns and a slower component (0.76–1.60 ns). The PL lifetime for samples with 5, 10 and 20 h milling time were found to be 0.73, 1.14 and 1.44 ns respectively. The PL intensities and peak energy for the nanocrystals were discussed in details.