Thermal stability and recrystallization of semiconductor nanostructured sulfides and sulfide solid solutions

Metal sulfide semiconductor nanostructures represent the most promising group of nanostructured materials with excellent optical and electrical properties for such applications as photoelectrochemical cells, photocells, photoconductors, infrared detectors, nonvolatile memory devices and resistive switches. Much attention is drawn to nanostructured sulfides PbS, Ag2S, SnS, and CdS of lead, silver, tin and cadmium, and also sulfide solid solutions. As a rule, microelectronic devices, photocells, photoconductors and infrared detectors, containing a nanostructured sulfides, operate in air at elevated temperatures (up to ∼400–450 K), at which the growth and variation in the phase composition of sulfide nanoparticles may take place, leading to the degradation of their electrical and optical properties. The uncontrolled growth of sulfide quantum dots and nanoparticles at high temperatures results in the instability and degradation of properties of electronic devices and compositions with nanostructured sulfides. In present paper, the data on the recrystallization and thermal stability of phase composition and particle size of semiconductor nanostructured PbS, Ag2S, SnS, and CdS sulfides and sulfide solid solutions CdxPb1-xS are considered. For the first time, the regions of thermal stability of sulfide nanoparticle sizes are determined. [Display omitted] •Nanostructured sulfides possess the thermal stability of particle size up to 450–700 K.•The temperature range above 450–700 K corresponds to region of collective recrystallization.•For nano-PbS, the activation energy of collective recrystallization is 110 kJ/mol1.•The activation energy of recrystallization for nano-Ag2S is 34 kJ/mol1.•The larger is the activation energy, the smaller is the nanoparticle size.