Highly luminescent blue-emitting CdZnS/ZnS nanorods having electric-field-induced fluorescence switching properties

We demonstrate for the first time highly luminescent blue-emitting CdZnS/ZnS wurtzite core/shell nanorods (NRs) that show electric-field-induced fluorescence switching properties. Uniform CdZnS NRs were rapidly synthesized by injecting sulfur powder dissolved in 1-octadecene into a flask containing phosphonic acid ligands, and subsequently ZnS shells were coated using reagents consisting of sulfur powder, zinc sulfate heptahydrate, and oleylamine. The growth of high-quality ZnS shells resulted in a dramatically increased photoluminescence (PL) quantum yield (QY) of ∼40% with a minimal red-shift of the blue PL peak, which indicates that the combination of reagents successfully controlled a large number of defects appearing on the surface of the NR cores. By pre-annealing CdZnS cores before growing ZnS shells, we could achieve an additional increase in the maximum PL QY to 50%, decreases in both the full width at half maximum (FWHM) and the red-shift of the PL peak, and improved electric-field-induced fluorescence switching performance. Density functional theory calculations reveal that the effective relaxation of strain accumulating on the NR core during shell growth is the key to our successful synthesis of blue-emitting NRs, and that the additional improvement in performance obtained through the pre-annealing process results from the elimination of sulfur vacancies appearing at the surface of the NR core.