Using time-resolved optical hole (oh)-burning techniques with femtosecond lasers, the time dependence of the spectral diffusion of the oh is examined for both the CdS quantum dot (QD) and the CdS/HgS/CdS quantum dot quantum well (QDQW) nanoparticles. It is found that the nonradiative relaxation of the optical hole is at least 3 orders of magnitude slower in the QDQW than in the QD system. Analysis of the second derivative of the broad transient bleach spectrum of the QDQW system in the 1.6-2.5 eV energy region at 50 fs delay time is found to have a minimum at 2.1 eV, corresponding to a minimum in the radiative probability. Around this energy, the rise and decay times of the transient bleach in the spectrum an found to change greatly. These results suggest that spectral diffusion in the QDQW is a result of relaxation from high- to low-energy exciton states, involving an intervening dark state at an energy of similar to 2.0 eV. The energies of the maxima and minimum of the second-derivative curve are found to be in good agreement with recent theoretical calculations by Jaskolski and Bryant(1) of the energies of the radiative and dark charge-separated state, respectively. In the latter, the hole is in the CdS clad and the electron is in the HgS well. The slow nonradiative relaxation processes involving this state are expected to be slow owing to the large change in the charge carrier effective masses as they cross from the CdS clad to the HgS well.