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- Title
Brightening of carbon nanotube photoluminescence through the incorporation of sp<sup>3</sup> defects.
- Authors
Piao, Yanmei; Meany, Brendan; Powell, Lyndsey R.; Valley, Nicholas; Kwon, Hyejin; Schatz, George C.; Wang, YuHuang
- Abstract
Semiconducting carbon nanotubes promise a broad range of potential applications in optoelectronics and imaging, but their photon-conversion efficiency is relatively low. Quantum theory suggests that nanotube photoluminescence is intrinsically inefficient because of low-lying 'dark' exciton states. Here we demonstrate the significant brightening of nanotube photoluminescence (up to 28-fold) through the creation of an optically allowed defect state that resides below the predicted energy level of the dark excitons. Emission from this new state generates a photoluminescence peak that is red-shifted by as much as 254 meV from the nanotube's original excitonic transition. We also found that the attachment of electron-withdrawing substituents to carbon nanotubes systematically drives this defect state further down the energy ladder. Our experiments show that the material's photoluminescence quantum yield increases exponentially as a function of the shifted emission energy. This work lays the foundation for chemical control of defect quantum states in low-dimensional carbon materials.
- Subjects
CARBON nanotubes; PHOTOLUMINESCENCE; PHOTONS; EXCITON theory; QUANTUM states
- Publication
Nature Chemistry, 2013, Vol 5, Issue 10, p840
- ISSN
1755-4330
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1038/nchem.1711