Optical enhancement of photoluminescence with colloidal quantum dots

This work investigates colloidal, semiconductor Cadmium Selenide (CdSe) QDs with optical spectroscopy measurements. A custom-built microscope has been used for photoluminescence spectroscopy and has collected images, videos, and spectra of samples to study the effects of substrates, sample density, uniformity, and QD aging with time. This set up will be used to detect single to a few molecules, shown by fluorescent intermittency, or QD blinking. Differences in the spectrum will be noted as related to the age of samples, the density of the quantum dots, and the concentration of samples. Further experiments include the potential plasmonic enhancement of QD photoluminescence by gold nanoparticles or nanostructures.