Hydrothermal synthesis of high-quality type-II CdTe/CdSe core/shell quantum dots with dark red emission

A hydrothermal method was used to synthesize type-II CdTe/CdSe core/shell quantum dots (QDs) using the thilglycolic acid (TGA) capped CdTe QDs as cores, which show a number of advantages. Because of the spatial separation of carriers the low excited states of CdTe/CdSe QDs, they exhibit many novel properties that are fundamentally different from the type-I QDs. On the other hand, our experiment results show that the wave function of the hole of the exciton in the CdTe core extends well into the CdSe shell. The results also reveal that a thick shell can confine the electrons inside the particles and thereby improve the PL efficiency and prolong the lifetime of the core/shell QDs. We use the UV-vis absorption and fluorescence spectrum measurements on growing particles in detail. We found that the fluorescence of the CdTe/CdSe QDs was strongly dependent on the thick of the shell and size of the core as well as the unique type-II heterostructure, which make the type-II core/shell QDs more suitable in photovoltaic or photoconduction applications.