Investigation of the effect of gamma irradiation on structural and optical properties of CdTe/CdSe quantum dots

In this paper, effect of gamma irradiation on structural and optical properties of CdTe/CdSe QDs were investigated for the first time. X-ray diffraction (XRD) results showed that synthesized QDs had cubic structure and gamma irradiation had no change in crystalline structure of CdTe/CdSe QDs. Also, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) results confirmed that crystalline structure of CdTe/CdSe QDs had no change after gamma irradiation. The photoluminescence (PL) results showed that intensity of CdTe/CdSe QDs after gamma irradiation enhanced significantly. Shell thickness of CdSe and concentration of QDs were investigated as two important factor on optical properties of CdTe/CdSe QDs versus gamma irradiation. The results showed that less shell thickness and less concentration of sample make bigger changes in optical properties and band gap size of CdTe/CdSe QDs after gamma irradiation and with decreasing concentration of the QDs, the red-shift in PL peak was occurred stronger. Our obtained results showed that luminescence and absorption of CdTe/CdSe QDs have sensitivity versus gamma irradiation and CdTe/CdSe QDs are good candidate to use in dosimetry applications.