Demonstration of modulatable optical near-field interactions between dispersed resonant quantum dots

We experimentally demonstrated the basic concept of modulatable optical near-field interactions by utilizing energy transfer between closely positioned resonant CdSe/ZnS quantum dot (QD) pairs dispersed on a flexible substrate. Modulation by physical flexion of the substrate changes the distances between quantum dots to control the magnitude of the coupling strength. The modulation capability was qualitatively confirmed as a change of the emission spectrum. We defined two kinds of modulatability for quantitative evaluation of the capability, and an evident difference was revealed between resonant and non-resonant QDs.