Evidence for a diffusion-controlled mechanism for fluorescence blinking of colloidal quantum dots

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https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0706164104
 http://hdl.handle.net/11603/29220

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UMBC Physics Department

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https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6370-8765

Date

2007-09-04

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journal articles
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Citation of Original Publication

Pelton, Matthew, Glenna Smith, Norbert F. Scherer, and Rudolph A. Marcus. “Evidence for a Diffusion-Controlled Mechanism for Fluorescence Blinking of Colloidal Quantum Dots.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104, no. 36 (September 4, 2007): 14249–54. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0706164104.

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This work was written as part of one of the author's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law.
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Abstract

Fluorescence blinking in nanocrystal quantum dots is known to exhibit power-law dynamics, and several different mechanisms have been proposed to explain this behavior. We have extended the measurement of quantum-dot blinking by characterizing fluctuations in the fluorescence of single dots over time scales from microseconds to seconds. The power spectral density of these fluctuations indicates a change in the power-law statistics that occurs at a time scale of several milliseconds, providing an important constraint on possible mechanisms for the blinking. In particular, the observations are consistent with the predictions of models wherein blinking is controlled by diffusion of the energies of electron or hole trap states.