The absolute photoluminescence (PL) quantum yield (QY) of oleic acid-capped colloidal PbS quantum dots (QDs) in toluene is thoroughly investigated as function of QD size, concentration, excitation photon energy, and conditions of storage. We observed anomalous decrease of QY with decreasing concentration for highly diluted suspensions.
The ligand desorption and QD-oxidation are demonstrated to be responsible for this phenomenon. Excess of oleic acid in suspensions makes the QY values concentration-independent over the entire reabsorption-free range.
The PL emission is shown to be dominated by surface-related recombinations with some contribution from QD-core transitions. We demonstrate that QD colloidal suspension stability improves with increasing the concentration and size of PbS QDs. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.