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Mid-infrared cascade intraband electroluminescence with HgSe–CdSe core–shell colloidal quantum dots

Nature Photonics volume 17, pages 1042–1046 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Efficient infrared light sources are needed for machine vision and molecular sensing. In the visible, electroluminescence from colloidal quantum dots is highly efficient, wavelength tunable and cost effective, which motivates using the same approach in the infrared. Despite the promising performances of colloidal quantum dots light-emitting diodes in the near-infrared, mid-infrared devices show quantum efficiencies of about 0.1% due to the much weaker emission. Moreover, these devices relied exclusively on the interband transition, restricting the possible materials. Here we show electroluminescence at 5 µm using the intraband transition between 1Se and 1Pe states within the conduction band of core–shell HgSe–CdSe colloidal quantum dots. The 4.5% quantum efficiency approaches that of commercial epitaxial cascade quantum well light-emitting diodes. The high emission efficiency and the electrical characteristics support a similar cascade process where the electrons, driven by the bias across the device, repeatedly tunnel into 1Pe and relax to 1Se as they hop from quantum dot to quantum dot.

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Fig. 1: Design and electroluminescence performance of HgSe–CdSe CQDs LED.
Fig. 2: Quantum efficiency of HgSe–CdSe and HgTe devices and mechanism discussion.

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The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

X.S. is supported by NSF-ECCS-2226311. A.K. is supported by DOE DE-SC0023210. This work made use of the shared facilities at the University of Chicago Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, supported by National Science Foundation under award number DMR-2011854, and the University of Chicago electron microscopy facility (RRID:SCR_019198).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. James Franck Institute, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Xingyu Shen, Ananth Kamath & Philippe Guyot-Sionnest

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  1. Xingyu Shen
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  2. Ananth Kamath
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  3. Philippe Guyot-Sionnest
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Contributions

P.G.S. and X.S. conceived the project. A.K. synthesized the HgSe–CdSe quantum dots. X.S. fabricated and characterized the LED devices. All authors contributed to the discussions of the paper.

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Correspondence to Philippe Guyot-Sionnest.

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Information on synthesis, device design, cascade mechanism and EL performances.

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Shen, X., Kamath, A. & Guyot-Sionnest, P. Mid-infrared cascade intraband electroluminescence with HgSe–CdSe core–shell colloidal quantum dots. Nat. Photon. 17, 1042–1046 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-023-01270-5

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