title: Combination of Photoinduced Alignment and Self-Assembly to Realize Polarized Emission from Ordered Semiconductor Nanorods.
abstract: One-dimensional semiconductor nanorods are a very promising class of materials for applications in modern optoelectronic devices, such as light-emitting diodes, solar cells, displays, and lasers. Their ability to emit linearly polarized light is considered to simplify device structures and improve the overall efficiencies. To ensure macroscopic polarization in such devices, the biggest challenge is the long-range alignment of nanorods by controllable means. We propose a technique that combines photoinduced alignment with nanorod's self-assembly. With this approach, we are able to actively control the alignment directions of highly emissive semiconductor nanorods in both microscopic and macroscopic scale with the order parameter as high as 0.87. As a result, polarized emission has been achieved with the degree of polarization of 0.62. Furthermore, patterned alignment of nanorods with spatially varying local orientations has been realized to demonstrate the great flexibility of this approach. Besides opportunities for applications, our method of alignment offers insights into host-guest interactions governing self-assembly of colloidal nanocrystals within the host molecular matrix.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory on Advanced Displays and Optoelectronics Technologies, Department of Electronic & Computer Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology , Hong Kong.
authors.forename: Tao
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Du
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Materials Science and Centre for Functional Photonics (CFP), City University of Hong Kong , Hong Kong.
authors.forename: Julian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Schneider
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory on Advanced Displays and Optoelectronics Technologies, Department of Electronic & Computer Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology , Hong Kong.
authors.forename: Abhishek K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Srivastava
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Materials Science and Centre for Functional Photonics (CFP), City University of Hong Kong , Hong Kong.
authors.forename: Andrei S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Susha
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory on Advanced Displays and Optoelectronics Technologies, Department of Electronic & Computer Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology , Hong Kong.
authors.forename: Vladimir G
authors.initials: VG
authors.lastname: Chigrinov
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory on Advanced Displays and Optoelectronics Technologies, Department of Electronic & Computer Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology , Hong Kong.
authors.forename: Hoi S
authors.initials: HS
authors.lastname: Kwok
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Materials Science and Centre for Functional Photonics (CFP), City University of Hong Kong , Hong Kong.
authors.forename: Andrey L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Rogach
keywords: nanorods; photoinduced alignment; polarized emission; self-assembly