Sustained biexciton emission in colloidal quantum wells assisted by dopant-host interaction

Abstract: Biexcitons have been considered as one of the fundamental building blocks for quantum technology because of its overwhelming advantages in generating entangled photon pairs. Although many-body complexes have been demonstrated recently in mono-layer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), the low emission efficiency and scale up capability hinder their applications. Colloidal nanomaterials, with high quantum efficiency and ease of synthesis/processing, are regarded to be an appealing complement to TMDs for biexciton sources. However, a progress towards biexciton emission in colloidal nanomaterials has been challenging largely by small binding energy and ultrafast non-radiative multiexciton recombination. Here, we demonstrate room-temperature biexciton emission in Cu-doped CdSe colloidal quantum wells (CQWs) under continuous-wave excitation with intensity as low as ~10 W/cm2. The characteristics of radiative biexciton states are investigated by their super linear emission with respect to excitation power, thermal stability and transient photophysics. The interaction between the quantum confined host carriers and the dopant ions increases biexciton binding energy by two folds compared to the undoped CQWs. Such strong binding energy together with suppressed Auger recombination and efficient, spectrally narrow photoluminescence in a quasi-2D semiconductor enables sustained biexciton emission at room temperature, providing a potential solution for efficient, scalable and stand-alone quantum devices.