Incorporation of a highly luminescent semiconductor quantum dot in ZrO 2-SiO2 hybrid sol-gel glass film

In this paper we describe a method for transferring semiconductor quantum dots, produced in non-polar solvents by an organometallic approach, into sol-gel matrices. ZrO2-SiO2 hybrid sol-gel glass films have been homogeneously doped with different semiconductor quantum dots (CdSe, CdSe@CdS and CdSe@ZnS). Both the absorption and the emission properties of the semiconductor nanocrystals are only slightly affected by the incorporation into the sol-gel matrix. The doped films showed sufficiently high refractive index for the realization of planar waveguides.