Determination of Thermal History by Photoluminescence of Core-shelled Quantum Dots Going Through Heating Events

A kind of novel thermal history nanosensors were theoretically designed and experimentally demonstrated to permanently record thermal events. The photoluminescence spectrum of core-shelled quantum dots CdSe/ZnS irreversibly shifted with heating histories (temperature and duration) of thermal events. The induced photoluminescence shift of the quantum dots CdSe/ZnS was employed to permanently record thermal histories. We further modeled a kind of thermal history nanosensor based on the thermal induced phenomena of core-shelled quantum dots to permanently record thermal histories at microscale and demonstrated to reconstruct temperature and duration of heating events simultaneously from photoluminescence spectra of the quantum dots. The physical mechanism of the sensors was discussed.