title: Photoluminescence of a single quantum emitter in a strongly inhomogeneous chemical environment.
abstract: We present the results of a comprehensive photoluminescence study of defect centres in single SiO2 nanoparticles. We show that the photo-physical properties of the luminescent centres strongly resemble those of single dye molecules. However, these properties exhibit a large variability from particle to particle due to the different local chemical environment around each centre of each particle. This variability provides new insight into the complex photo-physics of single quantum emitters embedded into a random chemical environment. Moreover, a better understanding of the fundamental mechanism of the photoluminescence of defect centres in SiO2 structure is paramount for their application as white-light sources, non-toxic labels for bio-imaging, or for combining them with metallic and semiconductor nanostructures.
authors.affiliation: III. Institute of Physics, Georg August University, 37077 Göttingen, Germany. jenderl@gwdg.de alexey.chizhik@phys.uni-goettingen.de.
authors.forename: Anna M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Chizhik
authors.forename: Luigi
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Tarpani
authors.forename: Loredana
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Latterini
authors.forename: Ingo
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Gregor
authors.forename: Jörg
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Enderlein
authors.forename: Alexey I
authors.initials: AI
authors.lastname: Chizhik