Assessing the overflowing pile-up effect on the photoluminescence lifetime of nanomaterials

The tunable complex emissive states with nanosecond to microsecond lifetimes in nanomaterials, arise due to their structural heterogeneity, enabling them with a wide range of advanced optoelectronic applications. However, understanding the complex photoluminescence lifetime in these nanomaterials is critically challenged by the overflowing pile-up effect, which occurs due to the high repetition rate of the light source in the time-correlated single photon counting (TCSPC) technique. Here, we provide a quantitative lifetime analysis, especially in metal nanoclusters, metal complexes, and semiconductor quantum dots, which suggests that the same experimental parameters can mislead the lifetime data interpretation for long-ranged luminescent nanomaterials. We demonstrate that the overflowing pile-up effect could be fatal while analyzing the excited state lifetime. Furthermore, we provide the optimized parameters that could be used to get the actual lifetime data of samples. We hope that our findings will be crucial in obtaining the error-free and accurate excited state dynamics of these long-range lifetime nanomaterials.