TY - JOUR
T1 - Suppression of blinking and enhanced exciton emission from individual carbon nanotubes
AU - Ai, Nan
AU - Walden-Newman, William
AU - Song, Qiang
AU - Kalliakos, Sokratis
AU - Strauf, Stefan
PY - 2011/4/26
Y1 - 2011/4/26
N2 - Blinking and spectral diffusion are hallmarks of nanoscale light emitters and a challenge for creating stable fluorescent biomarkers or efficient nonclassical light sources. Here, we demonstrate suppression of blinking and spectral diffusion of individual single-wall carbon nanotubes by manipulation of their dielectric environment, resulting in 5-fold enhanced light emission. In addition, it was found that the characteristic slopes of the blinking power laws are largely independent of the dielectric environment in the limit of a large number of switching events. In contrast, the on/off ratio determined from statistical occurrence analysis is found to be improved by 3 orders of magnitude toward the on state, making the on/off ratio an important measure for charge transfer from/into the local dielectric environment of a quantum emitter. Furthermore, our approach is compatible with integration into cavities, in contrast to previous demonstrations of spectral diffusion suppression achieved in free-standing single-wall carbon nanotubes. This opens up possibilities to couple the exciton emission of nonblinking carbon nanotubes to cavity modes to further benefit by the Purcell effect and to enhance the light extraction efficiency, in order to ultimately demonstrate efficient photonic devices.
AB - Blinking and spectral diffusion are hallmarks of nanoscale light emitters and a challenge for creating stable fluorescent biomarkers or efficient nonclassical light sources. Here, we demonstrate suppression of blinking and spectral diffusion of individual single-wall carbon nanotubes by manipulation of their dielectric environment, resulting in 5-fold enhanced light emission. In addition, it was found that the characteristic slopes of the blinking power laws are largely independent of the dielectric environment in the limit of a large number of switching events. In contrast, the on/off ratio determined from statistical occurrence analysis is found to be improved by 3 orders of magnitude toward the on state, making the on/off ratio an important measure for charge transfer from/into the local dielectric environment of a quantum emitter. Furthermore, our approach is compatible with integration into cavities, in contrast to previous demonstrations of spectral diffusion suppression achieved in free-standing single-wall carbon nanotubes. This opens up possibilities to couple the exciton emission of nonblinking carbon nanotubes to cavity modes to further benefit by the Purcell effect and to enhance the light extraction efficiency, in order to ultimately demonstrate efficient photonic devices.
KW - excitons
KW - fluorescence intermittency
KW - power law
KW - single-wall carbon nanotubes
KW - spectral diffusion
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U2 - 10.1021/nn102885p
DO - 10.1021/nn102885p
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:79955437637
SN - 1936-0851
VL - 5
SP - 2664
EP - 2670
JO - ACS Nano
JF - ACS Nano
IS - 4
ER -