Multiple temperature regimes of radiative decay in CdSe nanocrystal quantum dots: Intrinsic limits to the dark-exciton lifetime

Abstract

We investigate the strongly temperature-dependent radiative lifetime of electron–hole excitations in colloidal CdSe nanocrystal quantum dots over nearly three orders of magnitude in temperature (300 K to 380 mK). These studies reveal an intrinsic, radiative upper limit of ∼1 μs for the storage of excitons below 2 K. At higher temperatures, exciton lifetimes are consistent with thermal activation from the dark-exciton ground state, but with two different activation thresholds.