Abstract
We report a novel synthesis of monodisperse samples of copper telluride with crystallinity and stoichiometry corresponding to forms of rickardite, Cu3−xTe2 (x < 1). This synthesis makes use of a ligand balanced reaction to allow control over shape and size by varying the relative and absolute concentration of oleylamine to stearic acid. The rickardite samples presented here display size dependent plasmon peaks in the near infrared and direct energy band gaps between 1.7 and 2.3 eV. As such they may find utility in photovoltaic, thermoelectric or as novel optical materials for study of surface plasmons.
Highlights
Solar cells using semiconductor nanocrystal (NC) films have shown great promise for the production of low-cost, high efficiency photovoltaic (PVs) devices
The solution is degassed at 1008C for a further 30 min after which it is placed under 1 atm of nitrogen and heated to the injection temperature, typically 1658C. 4 ml of a 0.25 M solution of trioctylphosphine telluride is quickly injected into the solution to cause nucleation and the nanocrystals are grown for approximately 5 min at 1808C before the reaction is cooled quickly to room temperature
The synthesis described above generated monodisperse, spheroidal nanocrystals with average diameter of 9.2 + 1.1 nm variation in the major axis
Summary
Solar cells using semiconductor nanocrystal (NC) films have shown great promise for the production of low-cost, high efficiency photovoltaic (PVs) devices. Colloidal nanocrystals [1,2] and nanowires [3,4,5] can be well controlled and deposited by low temperature, non-vacuum methods such as ink-jet printing [6], spray coating [7], soft templates [8] and roll-to-roll printing [9], while allowing tuning of the size, band gap, conductivity and crystallinity of the films [10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20] As such PVs made from semiconductor NCs have a distinct advantage over current, stateof-the-art PVs made using thin film production methods.
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