Size-dependence of the anharmonicities in the vibrational potential of colloidal CdSe nanocrystals

We investigated multi-phonon processes in two types of CdSe nanocrystals, spherical quantum dots and nanorods by temperature-dependent Raman spectroscopy. We find the anharmonic constants relating to the two- and three-phonon decay channels to systematically change with changing nanocrystal size. The contributions from two-phonon processes decrease with decreasing diameter, while the contributions from higher-order processes increase. The anharmonicities in the vibrational potential increase due to the phonon confinement, and we did not find a shape dependence.