Determination of Thermal History by Photoluminescence of Core-shelled Quantum Dots Going Through Heating Events

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel nanosensor based on core-shelled quantum dots that can permanently record thermal histories by analyzing irreversible shifts in their photoluminescence spectra caused by heating events.

Contribution

The study presents both theoretical design and experimental validation of a new thermal history nanosensor using quantum dots, capable of reconstructing temperature and duration of heating events.

Findings

Quantum dots exhibit irreversible photoluminescence shifts with heating.

The nanosensor can reconstruct thermal history from spectral data.

Physical mechanisms of the sensor were elucidated.

Abstract

A kind of novel thermal history nanosensors were theoretically designed and experimentally demonstrated to permanently record thermal events. The photoluminescence spectrum of core-shelled quantum dots CdSe/ZnS irreversibly shifted with heating histories (temperature and duration) of thermal events. The induced photoluminescence shift of the quantum dots CdSe/ZnS was employed to permanently record thermal histories. We further modeled a kind of thermal history nanosensor based on the thermal induced phenomena of core-shelled quantum dots to permanently record thermal histories at microscale and demonstrated to reconstruct temperature and duration of heating events simultaneously from photoluminescence spectra of the quantum dots. The physical mechanism of the sensors was discussed.