Ultrafast carrier dynamics of PbS quantum dots in glasses for light amplification

Abstract

Lead sulfide quantum dots (PbS QDs) have a unique performance in the near-infrared (NIR) range. In-situ precipitation of PbS QDs in glass not only improves the stability, but also is easy to be fabricated fiber compatible with silicon photonics. In this work, we reveal that absorption cross sections of PbS QDs at 1040 nm are 4–13 × 10−16 cm2, the bi- and tri-excitons lifetime are∼60 and ∼10 ps due to the trap-assisted Auger recombination using transient absorption (TA). Furthermore, we demonstrate the broadband net gain in 1500–1600 nm in single PbS QDs embedded glass with a gain threshold of <N>= 4.1 (averaged number of excitons), and achieve the maximum gain time of ∼20 ps and gain coefficient of >120 cm−1. These results illustrate the existing obstacles to achieve the net gain in PbS QDs embedded glass, which is important for applications on fiber amplifiers, NIR laser and high-capacity telecommunication.