Interband Optical Transition Energies in Type-II PbSe/PbS Core/Shell Quantum Dots

Abstract

Electronic and optical properties of Type-II lead based core/shell semiconducting quantum dots are reported. Binding energies of electron–hole pair, optical transition energies and the absorption coefficients are investigated taking into account the geometrical confinement in PbSe/PbS core/shell quantum dot nanostructure. The energies are obtained with the increase of shell thickness for various inner core radii. The probability densities of electron and hole wave functions of radial coordinate of the core PbSe and PbS shell quantum dots are presented. The optical transition energy with the spatial confinement is brought out. The electronic properties are obtained using variational approach whereas the compact density matrix method is employed for the nonlinear optical properties. The results show that (i) a decrease in binding energy is obtained when the shell thickness increases due to more separation of electron–hole pair and (ii) the energy band gap decreases with the increase in the shell thickness resulting in the reduction of the higher energy interband transitions.