Two types of the relation between the intensity and the life time of photoluminescence of core/shell semiconductor quantum dots: important role of Coulomb field and tunneling transitions.

It has been recently found [Gh. Galland, Y. Ghosh, A. Steinbrück, M. Sykora, J. A. Hollingsworth, and V. I. Klimov, Nature (London) 479, 203 (2011)] that semiconductor core/shell nanocrystals (NCs) with blinking photoluminescence (PL) can be of "A" or "B" type. NCs of A-type exhibit correlation between the intensity of PL and the life time. In NCs of B-type such correlation is absent. Simple model based on combination of the charging model and the two-level system model is proposed for describing emissive properties of NCs of both types. The model invokes fluctuations of emission ability γ(em) of NC to explain the emissive properties of NCs of B-type. Our combined model is also in agreement with anticorrelation between the duration τ(off) of off intervals and PL life time t(off) in off intervals found recently for NCs of A-type in the experiment [A. A. Cordones, T. J. Bixby, and S. R. Leone, Nano Lett. 11, 3366 (2011)].