Understanding the excitation wavelength dependent spectral shift and large exciton binding energy of tungsten disulfide quantum dots and its interaction with single-walled carbon nanotubes.

Herein, we investigate the origin of excitation wavelength dependent spectral features and high fluorescence quantum yield in fluorescent 2D tungsten disulfide (WS2) quantum dots (QDs) of average size 2.4 nm. The as-prepared WS2 QDs possess high optical bandgap and reasonably high fluorescence quantum yield ~15.4% in the green region without any functionalization. The broad photoluminescence (PL) spectrum consists of multiple peaks owing to emissions from excitonic transitions and surface defect-related transitions. The excitation wavelength-dependent spectral redshift and narrowing of line shape in the PL peak are analyzed carefully, and it is attributed to the selective excitation/recombination of carriers from different energy levels. The temperature-dependent PL analysis yields an exciton binding energy of ~301 meV in the QDs. Furthermore, we study the interaction between fluorescent WS2 QDs and single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) and explore the mechanism of systematic quenching of PL of QDs by SWCNTs. The nature of the Stern-Volmer plot is found to be linear, and the time-resolved fluorescence measurements reveal that the quenching follows primarily the static behavior. Our study further reveals that defect sites in SWCNTs primarily act as the binding sites for WS2 QDs and form non-fluorescent complexes for effective quenching of the PL. The strong interaction between the WS2 QDs and the SWCNTs is evidenced from the spectral shift in the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and Raman peaks. Our study reveals the origin of excitation wavelength dependent PL emission from WS2 QDs and the nature of the interaction between WS2 QDs and SWCNTs, which are important for their applications in biomedical imaging and sensing, such as surface-enhanced Raman scattering, etc.