Structural characterization of mechanical milled ZnSe and ZnTe powders for photovoltaic devices

Surfactant and dopant addition effect on optical and structural properties of ZnSe (Te) nanostructured semiconductors

“…The increase of the average lifetime above the positron lifetime in bulk indicates vacancytype defects presence [19][20][21][22]30]. In figure 4 the average lifetime for all the analyzed samples is displayed, showing the clear presence of open volume defects.…”

“…have proved this statement. In addition, solid state reaction techniques, like mechanical milling [18] have also been applied to obtained nanoparticles, quantum dots and doped semiconductors [8,10,[19][20][21][22]. However, one disadvantage of this synthesis method is particles agglomeration and cold-welding producing increase particle sizes during ball milling operations.…”

“…In a previous work, we have investigated the effect of milling time on pure ZnSe and ZnTe semiconductor powders [21] by means of X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Positron Annihilation Lifetime Spectroscopy (PALS). These preliminary results indicated grain size reduction as milling proceeds and the formation of a diversity of defects.…”

Structural, optical and photocatalytic properties of zinc oxides obtained from spent alkaline batteries

“…Structural and morphological properties of the oxides were investigated by powder xray diffraction (XRD) and scanning and transmission electron microscopy (SEM and TEM), the textural properties were analysed by means of nitrogen isotherms and the optical absorption properties by DRS-UV-visible absorption spectroscopy. Also, the study of the defects in the prepared ZnO were analysed by positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy (PALS), which is one of the best techniques for probing vacancy defects in semiconductors [22,23]. PALS technique is a sensitive technique to correlate size effects and surface defects of nanoparticles with their electronic and optical properties.…”

Mechanical milled doped Zn-based semiconductors powders for photovoltaic devices

“…Since zinc telluride can be easily doped and being a low cost semiconductor material, it can be used as different constituent for solar cells, for example, as a back-surface field layer and p-type semiconductor material for a CdTe/ ZnTe structure [3e5] or as the inorganic element in hybrid solar cells. ZnTe alloys have been obtained with different morphologies and using a variety of methods such as electrodeposition [6], pulsed laser deposition (PLD) [7], thermal evaporation [8,9], molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), magnetron sputtering [10] and mechanical alloying techniques [11,12]. Mechanical alloying (MA) is a room temperature solid-state route able of synthesizing a variety of equilibrium and nonequilibrium alloys, including nanocrystalline phases and amorphous compounds [13,14].…”