Persistent spectral hole-burning phenomena in CuCl nanocrystals
Shinji Okamoto
Abstract
We have studied persistent spectral hole-burning (PSHB) phenomena of cuprous halide (CuCl) nanocrystals.In particular, we concentrate on two aspects: Fundamental physics and applications of the PSHB phenomena.Stark effects by trapped carriers or photoionization were proposed as the mechanisms of the PSHB phenomena.However, the further study is needed for the better understanding of the mechanism.In the course of the study to this direction, we found correlations between the PSHB phenomena and photoluminescence spectral-changes of excitons bound to Cu+-ion vacancies in CuCl nanocrystals and of Cu+ dimers in a NaCl crystal in CuCl nanocrystals embedded in a NaCl crystal.The spectral-changes can be triggered by Cu+-ion displacements in CuCl nanocrystals and in a NaCl crystal.On the other hand, in CuCl nanocrystals embedded in alumino borosilicate glass, the PSHB phenomena are considered to be caused by photophysical mechanisms, e. g., photoinduced structural-change at nanocrystal-glass interface and/or glass.PSHB phenomena can be applied to not only optical memory but also the precise, highresolution spectroscopy for the nanocrystals with a certain size.We report the nanocrystalsize dependent acoustic phonons confined in CuCl nanocrystals by using the PSHB phenomena.The size-dependent energy-intervals between zero-phonon lines and phonon sidebands in the hole-burning spectra almost coincide with the calculated energies of confined acoustic phonons in nanometer-size elastic spheres.We conclude that the phonon sidebands are due to confined acoustic phonons in CuCl nanocrystals.The observed confined acoustic