Irreversible Temperature Quenching and Antiquenching of Photoluminescence of ZnS/CdS:Mn/ZnS Quantum Well Quantum Dots

An experimental observation on irreversible thermal quenching and antiquenching behavior is reported for photoluminescence (PL) of ZnS/CdS:Mn/ZnS quantum well quantum dots (QWQDs) prepared with a reverse micelle method. The dual-color emissions, a blue emission band centered at 430 nm and a Mn2+ 4T1 -> 6A1 orange emission peak at 600 nm, were found to have different dependences of emission intensity on temperature in the range of 8-290 K. Depending on Mn2+ doping concentration, they can both show strong antiquenching behavior in a certain temperature range in addition to the usual thermal quenching when lowering down temperature while it is very prominent for orange emission but weaker for blue emission. Moreover, the antiquenching behavior is weakened with rise of temperature, giving rise to a hysteretic PL temperature dependence for the QWQDs.