Controlled synthesis of Ag-Au-S ternary nanostructured semiconductors

Ternary semiconductors have been attracting great attention recently owing to their interesting properties which make them suitable for many applications such as optoelectronics, photovoltaics, thermoelectrics and... [ view full abstract ]

Ternary semiconductors have been attracting great attention recently owing to their interesting properties which make them suitable for many applications such as optoelectronics, photovoltaics, thermoelectrics and photocatalysis. The nanostructuration of these materials could enhance their properties and allows the fine tunning of the latter by the control of the size and shape of the nanomaterial.

In this poster, two novel nanostructured Ag-Au-S ternary semiconductors are presented; synthesised by diffusion of gold (I) cations into pre-synthesised Ag2S nanoparticles at room temperature. There are two known crystallographic phases of the Ag-Au-S system with different stoichiometry: Ag3AuS2 which presents a cubic structure and AgAuS, with a monoclinic structure. The method allows the synthesis of both phases separately and it is also adequate for the synthesis of the analogue systems with Se and Te.