Room-temperature direct synthesis of semi-conductive PbS nanocrystal inks for optoelectronic applications.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 31723126.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-019-13158-6 and PMC identifier 6853884.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Lead sulphide (PbS) nanocrystals (NCs) are promising materials for low-cost, high-performance optoelectronic devices. So far, PbS NCs have to be first synthesized with long-alkyl chain organic surface ligands and then be ligand-exchanged with shorter ligands (two-steps) to enable charge transport. However, the initial synthesis of insulated PbS NCs show no necessity and the ligand-exchange process is tedious and extravagant. Herein, we have developed a direct one-step, scalable synthetic method for iodide capped PbS (PbS-I) NC inks. The estimated cost for PbS-I NC inks is decreased to less than 6 $·g<sup>-1</sup>, compared with 16 $·g<sup>-1</sup> for conventional methods. Furthermore, based on these PbS-I NCs, photodetector devices show a high detectivity of 1.4 × 10<sup>11</sup> Jones and solar cells show an air-stable power conversion efficiency (PCE) up to 10%. This scalable and low-cost direct preparation of high-quality PbS-I NC inks may pave a path for the future commercialization of NC based optoelectronics.