Hydrothermal Synthesis of Aqueous-Soluble Copper Indium Sulfide Nanocrystals and Their Use in Quantum Dot Sensitized Solar Cells
Calink I. L. Santos,
Wagner S. Machado,
Karl David Wegner,
Leiriana A. P. Gontijo,
Jefferson Bettini,
Marco A. Schiavon,
Peter Reiss,
Dmitry Aldakov
Affiliations
Calink I. L. Santos
Grupo de Pesquisa em Química de Materiais (GPQM), Departamento de Ciências Naturais, Universidade Federal de São João del-Rei, Campus Dom Bosco, Praça Dom Helvécio, 74, CEP 36301-160 São João del-Rei, MG, Brazil
Wagner S. Machado
Grupo de Pesquisa em Química de Materiais (GPQM), Departamento de Ciências Naturais, Universidade Federal de São João del-Rei, Campus Dom Bosco, Praça Dom Helvécio, 74, CEP 36301-160 São João del-Rei, MG, Brazil
Karl David Wegner
Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CEA, CNRS, IRIG-SyMMES, STEP, 38000 Grenoble, France
Leiriana A. P. Gontijo
Grupo de Pesquisa em Química de Materiais (GPQM), Departamento de Ciências Naturais, Universidade Federal de São João del-Rei, Campus Dom Bosco, Praça Dom Helvécio, 74, CEP 36301-160 São João del-Rei, MG, Brazil
Jefferson Bettini
Laboratório Nacional de Nanotecnologia, Centro Nacional de Pesquisa em Energia e Materiais, CEP 13083-970 Campinas-SP, Brazil
Marco A. Schiavon
Grupo de Pesquisa em Química de Materiais (GPQM), Departamento de Ciências Naturais, Universidade Federal de São João del-Rei, Campus Dom Bosco, Praça Dom Helvécio, 74, CEP 36301-160 São João del-Rei, MG, Brazil
Peter Reiss
Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CEA, CNRS, IRIG-SyMMES, STEP, 38000 Grenoble, France
Dmitry Aldakov
Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CEA, CNRS, IRIG-SyMMES, STEP, 38000 Grenoble, France
A facile hydrothermal method to synthesize water-soluble copper indium sulfide (CIS) nanocrystals (NCs) at 150 °C is presented. The obtained samples exhibited three distinct photoluminescence peaks in the red, green and blue spectral regions, corresponding to three size fractions, which could be separated by means of size-selective precipitation. While the red and green emitting fractions consist of 4.5 and 2.5 nm CIS NCs, the blue fraction was identified as in situ formed carbon nanodots showing excitation wavelength dependent emission. When used as light absorbers in quantum dot sensitized solar cells, the individual green and red fractions yielded power conversion efficiencies of 2.9% and 2.6%, respectively. With the unfractionated samples, the efficiency values approaching 5% were obtained. This improvement was mainly due to a significantly enhanced photocurrent arising from complementary panchromatic absorption.
