Understanding the growth mechanism of wurtzite Cu2ZnSnS4 nanocrystals and the photodegradation properties

Publication date: 5 June 2017
Source:Materials & Design, Volume 123
Author(s): Yao Gao, Fei Long, Jilin Wang, Jin Zhang, Shuyi Mo, Zhengguang Zou
High quality wurtzite Cu2ZnSnS4 (W-CZTS) nanocrystals (NCs) could be easily obtained by a simple green one-pot reaction process. Forming mechanism of the nanocrystals was investigated by XRD and Raman characterization. It demonstrated that forming W-CZTS started with nucleation of Cu2S, then Sn⁴⁺ diffused into Cu2S to form the Cu2SnS3, finally Zn²⁺ diffused into Cu2SnS3 to obtain W-CZTS. The optical and photocatalytic results of the W-CZTS NCs indicated that W-CZTS nanocrystals with copper-poor composition showed a better photocatalytic activity (the degradation of MB (methylene blue) could reach up to 81.79%). Moreover, this non-injected one-pot method could be further popularized and become a common approach to synthesize other quaternary wurtzite Cu2MSnS4 (M=Fe²⁺, Co²⁺, Ni²⁺, Mn²⁺, Mg²⁺) nanocrystals.

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