Engineering the optoelectronic properties of semiconductor quantum dots via quantum cutting and quantum entanglement for optoelectronic devices

For optimized optoelectronic devices, appropriate photon management is required such that full energy spectrum of the photons are properly captured. In conventional solar cells and photoelectrolytic devices, the electron hole-pair is generated by the incoming photon with energy above a certain threshold. The excess energy being lost to heat as thermalization thus reduces the overall performance of the device. To circumvent the situation, space separated quantum cutting process is used in which a high energy photon can be split into two low energy photons compatible with the environment for exciton generation. Such photon engineering can effectively increase the overall efficiency of photovoltaic devices. In this review, we demonstrate photon splitting via quantum cutting (QC) by semiconductor nanocrystals, where the resonance created in the coupled quantum dots causes quantum entanglement and hence downconversion mechanism.