Blocked Electron Transfer and Suppressed Blinking of Single CdSe/ZnS Quantum Dots in Agarose Gel

Abstract

Fluorescence blinking is an interesting phenomenon commonly observed in single molecule/particle spectroscopy and has attracted wide interest recently. Such behavior in quantum dots is undesirable for applications as fluorescence markers. In this report, we observed suppressed blinking for single CdSe/ZnS quantum dots mixed in agarose gel We attributed the suppression to an increase in activation energy so that the charge transfer is blocked from the neutral light state to the charged dark state as the gel concentration increases