Search

Abstract In recent years, radiative cooling has become a topic of considerable interest for applications in the context of thermal building management and energy saving. The idea to direct thermal radiation in a controlled way to achieve contactless sample cooling for laboratory applications, however, is scarcely explored. Here, we present an approach to obtain spatially structured radiative cooling. By using an elliptical mirror, we are able to enhance the view factor of radiative heat transfer between a room temperature substrate and a cold temperature landscape by a factor of 92. A temperature pattern and confined thermal gradients with a slope of ~ 0.2 °C/mm are created. The experimental applicability of this spatially structured cooling approach is demonstrated by contactless supercooling of hexadecane in a home-built microfluidic sample. This novel concept for structured cooling yields numerous applications in science and engineering as it provides a means of controlled temperature manipulation with minimal physical disturbance.

Using a combination of femtosecond pump-probe spectroscopy and first-principles calculations, Debnath et al. elucidated the halide-dependence of the excited state vibrational coherences in hybrid organic-inorganic perovskite nanocrystals. The study revealed an intrinsic anharmonicity of lead-halide framework, which correlates with perovskite stability and is influenced by the interaction between the framework and the organic molecules.

Efficient photocatalytic hydrogen generation relies on highly choreographed delivery of protons and electrons to the reaction site such that they arrive just in time. Here, authors show that proton transport can be controlled by light with the photobase effect to increase H2 generation rate.

The effects of the combined interplay of below-band-gap multi-photon absorption and multiple exciton generation have not been investigated. Here, the authors show the combined interaction of these processes in perovskite nanocrystals, leading to an enhanced interband photoluminescence emission under resonant conditions.

Carbon dots are an emergent class of nanomaterials that hold promise for innovations in imaging, sensing, and catalytic technologies. Here, Stolarczyk and colleagues control the nitrogen-atom content and location within carbon dots, reporting the resulting impact on emissivity and photocatalytic behaviour.

Recently, layered hybrid perovskites have been attracting huge interest due to a wide range of possible chemical compositions and the resulting tunability of the materials’ properties. In this study, we investigate the effect of the chain length of the organic ligands on the optical properties of stacks of two-dimensional perovskite layers consisting of alkylammonium lead iodide (CnH2n+1NH3)2PbI4 with n = 4, …, 18. Photoluminescence and absorption spectroscopy reveal a blueshift with increasing chain length n including a jump of 110 meV between the n = 10 and n = 12 ligands due to a change in octahedral tilting. Using X-ray diffraction, we determine the crystal structure and find the octahedral tilting to be the main cause of this blueshift. However, for very short chain lengths, additional effects further reduce the transition energy. Results of effective mass approximation model calculations show good agreement between the expected reduction of transition energy and measured photoluminescence emission wavelength for these samples. This highlights how octahedral tilting plays a major role in determining the optical bandgap and suggests that miniband formation plays only a minor role in this material.

Highly luminescent indium phosphide zinc sulfide (InPZnS) quantum dots (QDs), with zinc selenide/zinc sulfide (ZnSe/ZnS) shells, were synthesized. The QDs were modified via a post-synthetic ligand exchange reaction with 3-mercaptopropionic acid (MPA) and 11-mercaptoundecanoic acid (MUA) in different MPA:MUA ratios, making this study the first investigation into the effects of mixed ligand shells on InPZnS QDs. Moreover, this article also describes an optimized method for the correlation of the QD size vs. optical absorption of the QDs. Upon ligand exchange, the QDs can be dispersed in water. Longer ligands (MUA) provide more stable dispersions than short-chain ligands. Thicker ZnSe/ZnS shells provide a better photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) and higher emission stability upon ligand exchange. Both the ligand exchange and the optical properties are highly reproducible between different QD batches. Before dialysis, QDs with a ZnS shell thickness of ~4.9 monolayers (ML), stabilized with a mixed MPA:MUA (mixing ratio of 1:10), showed the highest PLQY, at ~45%. After dialysis, QDs with a ZnS shell thickness of ~4.9 ML, stabilized with a mixed MPA:MUA and a ratio of 1:10 and 1:100, showed the highest PLQYs, of ~41%. The dispersions were stable up to 44 days at ambient conditions and in the dark. After 44 days, QDs with a ZnS shell thickness of ~4.9 ML, stabilized with only MUA, showed the highest PLQY, of ~34%.

Metal halide perovskites are promising materials for a range of applications. The synthesis of light-emitting perovskite nanorods has become popular recently. Thus far, the facile synthesis of perovskite nanorods remains elusive. In this work, we have developed a facile synthesis to fabricate FAPbI3 nanorods for the first time, demonstrating a high photoluminescence quantum yield of 35−42%. The fabrication of the nanorods has been made possible by carefully tuning the concentration of formamidine-oleate as well as the amount of oleic acid with pre-dissolved PbI2 in toluene with oleic acid/oleylamine.

The feasibility of single molecule spectroscopy in the near-UV on wide-gap conjugated polymers such as polyfluorenes is demonstrated. It is noted that efficient excitation energy transfer (EET) does not occur in all molecules, as many single molecules (~80%) do not exhibit EET to the endcap and intrachain EET is inefficient on average.

Förster (or fluorescence) resonant energy transfer (FRET) is a powerful spectroscopic technique to study interactions, conformational and distance changes, in hybrid nanosystems. Semiconductor nanocrystals, also known as colloidal quantum dots, are highly efficient fluorophores with a strong band-gap luminescence tuneable by size as a result of the quantum confinement effect. Starting from a short summary on the FRET formalism and on the basic properties of semiconductor nanocrystals, this Feature Article provides an overview of the major classes of hybrid FRET systems with semiconductor nanocrystals as at least one component. Systems under consideration include thin solid films containing differently sized semiconductor nanocrystals, solution-based complexes of differently sized semiconductor nanocrystals, nanocrystal-based bioconjugates, and hybrid structures of semiconductor and gold nanoparticles. We focus in particular on the directional energy transfer in layer-by-layer assembled multilayers of differently sized CdTe semiconductor nanocrystals and on the energy transfer from individual rod-like semiconductor CdSe/CdS nanoantennae to single dye molecules, which can be efficiently controlled by external electric fields leading to the realisation of the FRET optical switch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We demonstrate strong coupling of nanocavities in metal films, sparked by propagating surface plasmons. Unlike the coupling of metallic nanoparticles which decays over distances of tens of nanometers, the metallic nanocavities display long range coupling at distances of hundreds of nanometers for the properly selected metal/wavelength combinations. Such strong coupling drastically changes the symmetry of the charge distribution around the nanocavities as is evidenced by the nonlinear optical response of the medium. We show that when strongly coupled, equilateral triangular nanocavities lose their individual symmetry to adopt the lower symmetry of the coupled system and respond like a single dipolar entity. A quantitative model is suggested for the transition from individual to strongly coupled nanocavities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]