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Copyright 2004 by Marcel Dekker, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Copyright 2004 by Marcel Dekker, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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strates that two separate mechanisms govern the blinking of CdSe QDs: (1) atemperature-independent tunneling process and (2) a temperature-dependentphotoionization process. The truncation effect is not observed in the off-timestatistics on the timescale of our experiments. Because the power law of theoff-time statistics extends well beyond the truncation point of the power-lawdistribution of the on-time statistics, the on-time truncation/deviation is notan artifact of the experimental time.C. Random Walk ModelThe universality of the off-time statistics for all of the QDs indicates anintrinsic mechanism driving the mechanism of the power-law blinkingbehavior. Furthermore, because the power-law statistics are temperatureand excitation intensity independent, the process that couples the dark tobright states is a tunneling process and not phonon assisted. As mentionedearlier, spectrally resolved emission measurements showed a correlationbetween blinking and spectral shifting at cryogenic temperatures. Consideringthe large variations in the transition energy (as large as 60 meV [13]) of thebright state, we propose a theoretical framework using a random walk–firstpassage time model [32] of a dark-trap state that shifts into resonance with theexcited state to explain the extraordinary statistics observed here.In this random walk model, the ‘‘on–off ’’ blinking takes place as theelectrostatic environment around each individual QD, described in Fig. 6,undergoes a random walk oscillation. When the electric field changes, thetotal energy for a localized charge QD also fluctuates and only when the totalenergy of the localized-charge (off ) state and neutral (on) state is in resonance,the change between the two occurs. This can be pictured as a dynamic phasespace of bright and dark states. The shift from the dark to bright state (viceversa) is the critical step when the charge becomes delocalized (localized) andthe QD turns on (off ). The observed power-law time dependence can beunderstood as follows. If the system has been off for a long time, the system isdeep within the charged state (off region) of the dynamic phase space and isunlikely to enter the neutral state (on region) of the phase space. On the otherhand, close to the transition point, the system would interchange between thecharged and neutral states rapidly. As the simplest random walk model, wepropose an illustrative example of a one-dimensional phase space with asingle trapped-charged state that is wandering in energy. At each crossing ofthe trap and intrinsic excited-state energies, the QD changes from dark tobright or bright to dark. Because the transition from on to off is a temperature-independenttunneling process, it can only occur when the trap stateand excited core state of the QD are in resonance. In addition, a temperature-dependenthopping process, related to the movement and creation/annihilation of trapped charges surrounding the QD core, drives the trap<strong>Copyright</strong> <strong>2004</strong> <strong>by</strong> <strong>Marcel</strong> <strong>Dekker</strong>, <strong>Inc</strong>. <strong>All</strong> <strong>Rights</strong> <strong>Reserved</strong>.

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