Electrical control of single-photon emission in highly-charged individual colloidal quantum dots.

Electron transfer to an individual quantum dot promotes the formation of charged excitons with enhanced recombination pathways and reduced lifetimes. Excitons with only one or two extra charges have allowed for the development of very efficient quantum dot lasing [1] and the understanding of blinking dynamics [2], while charge transfer management has yielded single quantum dot LEDs [3], LEDs with reduced efficiency roll-off [4], and enabled studies of carrier and spin dynamics [5]. Here, by room-temperature time-resolved experiments on individual giant-shell CdSe/CdS quantum dots, we show the electrochemical formation of highly charged excitons containing more than twelve electrons and one hole. We report control of intensity blinking, as well as a deterministic manipulation of quantum dot photodynamics, with an observed 210-fold increase of the decay rate, accompanied by 12-fold decrease of the emission intensity, all while preserving single-photon emission characteristics. These results pave the way for deterministic control over the charge state, and room-temperature decay-rate engineering for colloidal quantum dot-based classical and quantum communication technologies.