Ko Hsien-Chen, Yuan Chi-Tsu, Tang Jau
Research Center for Applied Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan.
Nano Rev. 2011;2. doi: 10.3402/nano.v2i0.5895. Epub 2011 Feb 11.
In this review we present an overview of the experimental and theoretical development on fluorescence intermittency (blinking) and the roles of electron transfer in semiconductor crystalline nanoparticles. Blinking is a very interesting phenomenon commonly observed in single molecule/particle experiments. Under continuous laser illumination, the fluorescence time trace of these single nanoparticles exhibit random light and dark periods. Since its first observation in the mid-1990s, this intriguing phenomenon has attracted wide attention among researchers from many disciplines. We will first present the historical background of the discovery and the observation of unusual inverse power-law dependence for the waiting time distributions of light and dark periods. Then, we will describe our theoretical modeling efforts to elucidate the causes for the power-law behavior, to probe the roles of electron transfer in blinking, and eventually to control blinking and to achieve complete suppression of the blinking, which is an annoying feature in many applications of quantum dots as light sources and fluorescence labels for biomedical imaging.
在本综述中，我们概述了荧光间歇性（闪烁）的实验和理论发展，以及电子转移在半导体晶体纳米颗粒中的作用。闪烁是在单分子/颗粒实验中常见的非常有趣的现象。在连续激光照射下，这些单个纳米颗粒的荧光时间轨迹呈现出随机的亮暗周期。自20世纪90年代中期首次观察到以来，这种有趣的现象引起了许多学科研究人员的广泛关注。我们将首先介绍发现和观察到亮暗周期等待时间分布异常的反幂律依赖性的历史背景。然后，我们将描述我们的理论建模工作，以阐明幂律行为的原因，探究电子转移在闪烁中的作用，并最终控制闪烁并实现闪烁的完全抑制，闪烁在量子点作为光源和生物医学成像荧光标记的许多应用中是一个令人烦恼的特征。
