Dominant luminescence is not due to quantum confinement in molecular-sized silicon carbide nanocrystals

Beke, Dávid and Szekrényes, Zsolt and Czigány, Zsolt and Kamarás, Katalin and Gali, Ádám (2015) Dominant luminescence is not due to quantum confinement in molecular-sized silicon carbide nanocrystals. NANOSCALE, 2015. pp. 10982-10988. ISSN 2040-3364

Text Nanoscale7201510982_BekeD_u.pdf Restricted to Registered users only Download (1MB) | Request a copy

Abstract

Molecular-sized colloid silicon carbide (SiC) nanoparticles are very promising candidates to realize bioinert non-perturbative fluorescent nanoparticles for in vivo bioimaging. Furthermore, SiC nanoparticles with engineered vacancy-related emission centres may realize magneto-optical probes operating at nanoscale resolution. Understanding the nature of molecular-sized SiC nanoparticle emission is essential for further applications. Here we report an efficient and simple method to produce a relatively narrow size distribution of water soluble molecular-sized SiC nanoparticles. The tight control of their size distribution makes it possible to demonstrate a switching mechanism in the luminescence correlated with particle size. We show that molecular-sized SiC nanoparticles of 1-3 nm show a relatively strong and broad surface related luminescence whilst the larger ones exhibit a relatively weak band edge and structural defect luminescence with no evidence of quantum confinement effect.

Actions (login required)

Edit Item