Issue 25, 2015

Dominant luminescence is not due to quantum confinement in molecular-sized silicon carbide nanocrystals

Abstract

Molecular-sized colloid silicon carbide (SiC) nanoparticles are very promising candidates to realize bioinert non-perturbative fluorescent nanoparticles for in vivo bioimaging. Furthermore, SiC nanoparticles with engineered vacancy-related emission centres may realize magneto-optical probes operating at nanoscale resolution. Understanding the nature of molecular-sized SiC nanoparticle emission is essential for further applications. Here we report an efficient and simple method to produce a relatively narrow size distribution of water soluble molecular-sized SiC nanoparticles. The tight control of their size distribution makes it possible to demonstrate a switching mechanism in the luminescence correlated with particle size. We show that molecular-sized SiC nanoparticles of 1–3 nm show a relatively strong and broad surface related luminescence whilst the larger ones exhibit a relatively weak band edge and structural defect luminescence with no evidence of quantum confinement effect.

Graphical abstract: Dominant luminescence is not due to quantum confinement in molecular-sized silicon carbide nanocrystals

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Communication
Submitted
21 Feb 2015
Accepted
21 May 2015
First published
25 May 2015
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Nanoscale, 2015,7, 10982-10988

Author version available

Dominant luminescence is not due to quantum confinement in molecular-sized silicon carbide nanocrystals

D. Beke, Z. Szekrényes, Z. Czigány, K. Kamarás and Á. Gali, Nanoscale, 2015, 7, 10982 DOI: 10.1039/C5NR01204J

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