Chiroptical activity in colloidal quantum dots coated with achiral ligands

We studied the chiroptical properties of colloidal solution of CdSe and CdSe/ZnS quantum dots (QDs) with a cubic lattice structure which were initially prepared without use of any chiral molecules and coated with achiral ligands. We demonstrate circular dichroism (CD) activity around first and second excitonic transition of these CdSe based nanocrystals. We consider that this chiroptical activity is caused by imbalance in racemic mixtures of QDs between the left and right handed nanoparticles, which appears as a result of the formation of various defects or incorporation of impurities into crystallographic structure during their synthesis. We demonstrate that optical activity of colloidal solution of CdSe QDs with achiral ligands weakly depends on the QDs size and number of ZnS monolayers, but does not depend on the nature of achiral ligands or polarity of the solution.