Electrogenerated Chemiluminescence from PbS Quantum Dots

We report the first observation of electrogenerated chemiluminescence (ECL) from PbS quantum dots (ODs). Different ECL intensities are observed for different ligands used to passivate the ODs, which indicates that ECL is sensitive to surface chemistry, with the potential to serve as a powerful probe of surface states and charge transfer dynamics in ODs. In particular, passivation of the OD surfaces with trioctylphosphine (TOP) increases ECL intensity by 3 orders of magnitude when compared to passivation with oleic acid alone. The observed overlap of the ECL and photoluminescence spectra suggests a significant reduction of deep surface trap states from the ODs passivated with TOP.