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Excitation Power Dependence Of Blinking In Copper-Indium-Sulfide Quantum Dots, Nicholas Chambers

Physics Undergraduate Honors Theses

Under continuous excitation, quantum dots exhibit random transitions between fluorescent ON states and non-fluorescent OFF states --- a phenomenon known as blinking. A physical description of the mechanism responsible for blinking that applies broadly to many types of quantum dots remains under debate. We study the blinking behavior of the non-toxic CuInS2 quantum dot, a system that has seen little investigation at the single-particle level. In particular, the optical properties of CuInS2 quantum are often improved by adding ZnS to the nanoparticles, but this addition leads to complex structural-optical property relationships that are even less understood. To probe the relationship …