ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a reinvestigation of spectral-kinetic properties for Cadmium selenide (CdSe)/ZnS quantum dots (QD) in solvents being obtained in a wide temperature range. It focuses on ensemble experiments to unravel as many as possible subtle optical properties of core and surface-related electronic states, which will give new insights into several optical observables both with respect to a basic understanding of surface properties and with envisaged applications. The chapter summarizes the basic implications of the influence of temperature on photoluminescence (PL) spectral-kinetic parameters for core/shell CdSe/ZnS QDs. If successfully applied, the large variety of functional organic molecules at hand allows for a broad scenario for modification of optical QD properties. Investigations of single QDs reveal PL intermittency, which has been explained either by photoinduced charging or a multiple relaxation center model. Due to weak ergodicity breaking QD ensemble and time-averaging single-QD data cannot uniquely but qualitatively be related to each other.
