Highly directional emission from colloidally synthesized nanocrystals in vertical cavities with small mode spacing

Abstract

The optical properties of light emitting devices based on colloidally synthesized CdSe/CdS core/shell semiconductor nanocrystals embedded in vertical cavities are investigated. The cavities are several micrometers, thick and formed by a metallic mirror and a dielectric Bragg interference mirror deposited on the opposite surfaces of cleaved pristine mica sheets. Due to the large cavity length, up to 30 resonances are found within the Bragg mirror stop band. The corresponding small mode spacing allows one to extract a large portion of the broad nanocrystal luminescence band from the cavity upon optical excitation. The spontaneous emission of these cavities is highly forward directed with a beam divergence smaller than 1.3°. Furthermore, the emission is linearly polarized which is a result of the birefringent properties of the mica sheets.