Multifunctional optical materials based on transparent inorganic glasses embedded with PbS QDs

Abstract

Quantum dot (QD)-embedded glass, which is a high-performance multifunctional optical material, has the combined advantages of excellent optical properties of QDs and easy processing of glass. In this study, an inorganic PbS QD embedded multicomponent glass, which produces variable emission at different ultraviolet (UV) excitation wavelengths, is synthesized. The samples are fabricated via a facile melt-quenching method and their structural, optical, photoluminescent, and morphological properties are discussed. The QD glass exhibits broad-band UV excitation in the range of 250–400 nm, and the full width at half maximum of the emission peaks of the QD glasses reaches 177.8 and 158.5 nm at room temperature under an excitation of 365 and 310 nm, respectively. Notably, white light emission with a high color rendering index is obtained under UV excitation at 350 and 365 nm by doping blue light emitting rare earth (RE) Tm3+ ions into the system. The doped samples exhibit excellent color stability and their CIE coordinates shift along the Planck blackbody locus with increasing temperature. Further, based on the differences in the luminescence mechanisms of the PbS QDs and Tm3+ ions, the application potential of the RE-doped PbS QD-embedded glasses in optical thermometry is discussed. The results demonstrate the application potential of these optically multifunctional inorganic QD glasses in the fields of optical conversion, anti-counterfeiting, white light illumination, and non-contact optical temperature measurement.