Scalable production of microbially-mediated ZnS nanoparticles and application to functional thin films

A series of semiconducting zinc sulfide (ZnS) nanoparticles were scalably, reproducibly, controllably, and economically synthesized with anaerobic metal-reducing Thermoanaerobacter species. They reduced partially oxidized sulfur sources to sulfides that extracellularly and thermodynamically incorporated with zinc ions to produce sparingly soluble ZnS nanoparticles with ~5 nm crystallites at yields of ~5 g l 1 month 1. A predominant sphalerite formation was facilitated by rapid precipitation kinetics, low cation/anion ratio, higher zinc concentration, water stabilization, or some combination of the four. The sphalerite ZnS nanoparticles exhibited narrow size distribution, high emission intensity, and few native defects. Scale-up and emission tunability using copper-doping were confirmed spectroscopically. Surface characterization was determined using Fourier transform infrared and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopies, which confirmed amine and carboxylic acid not only maintaining a nano-dimensional average crystallite size, but also increasing aggregation. Application of ZnS nanoparticle ink to a functional thin film was successfully tested for potential future applications.