Synthesis and Preliminary Photoelectrochemical Study of Silver Antimony Sulfide Semiconductor

Silver antimony sulfide (Ag3SbS3) has been synthesized in a solid state route from silver, antimony and sulfur powder precursors in sealed tube under an argon atmosphere and with a customized temperature program. The product was characterized by powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) and found to be pyrargyrite, Ag3SbS3 with a small band gap (Eg) of 2.0 eV and we investigated its ability to absorb solar energy and produce electron-hole (e-h+) pairs for water splitting. We report a photoelectrochemical study with films on fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) substrate and with bulk solid electrodes prepared from pieces of pyrargyrite grown. The response from the solid electrodes was significantly different from the photocurrent observed from the films.