Effect of Post Thermal Annealing on the Optical Properties of InP/ZnS Quantum Dot Films

The enhancement of optical properties via thermal annealing on InP/ZnS core/shell quantum dot (QD) film was investigated in this work. The increase of emission intensities of the QD films was observed after thermal annealing at 180 °C for 5 min. Through temperature dependence photoluminescence (TDPL) and power dependence photoluminescence (PL) measurement, the peak located at the low-energy shoulder was confirmed to be localized state emission and the high energy one comes from free-carrier emission. Moreover, from the TDPL spectra of the sample annealed at 180 °C for 5 min, the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of localization state emission was nearly the same before which is 250 K and then decreased with increasing temperature. However, the FWHM was decreased significantly when temperature increased in the untreated sample. We conclude that the escape of localization states with increasing temperature contributes to this anomaly phenomenon. Our studies have significance on the application of QDs in electroluminescence devices and down-conversion light-emitting devices.