Selenium–Tellurium Nanorods Via Pulsed Laser in Liquids

Introduction

Chalcogens elements like Selenium (Se) and Tellurium (Te) have garnered significant interest within the scientific community due to their multidisciplinary applications in opto-electronic, bio-medicine and energy devices. Indeed, both (Se and Te) have been identified as energy-critical elements by the American Chemical Society and Materials Research Society. They both are rare earth elements that possess the same crystal structure with a chiral nature. When both of them are mixed, they easily form a totally miscible binary alloy, giving rise to unique properties like a tunable bandgap, stability, and high mobility, demonstrating their potential for use in high-performance opto-electronic devices. In this report, SeTe nanorods were synthesized for the first time by using the "bottom-ablation" Pulsed Laser Ablation in Liquids (PLALs) technique. PLALs is acost-effective and green technique that is used to produce nanoparticles with high purity in comparison to wet chemistry methods. Additionally, PLALs also helps to generate nanostructures with desirable phases, shapes and sizes.

Method

Bulk Selenium–Tellurium (SeTe) targets (99.999% purity) were immersed in a 50 ml single-neck glass flask containing 10 ml of acetone. The SeTe targets were irradiated for 5-minutes using a Nd:YAG laser, emitting at 1064 nm and pulsing at 1 kHz. The average laser power was 12.5 W, with an energy of 12.5 mJ/pulse at 1 kHz. The average beam spot size was measured to be around ~ 110 ± 28 μm, delivering a fluence of around ~131 ± 33 Jcm^-2.

Results

Finally, after 5 minutes of irradiation, monodispersed hexagonal-shaped TeSe nanorods were produced. The crystal structure of those nanorods is hexagonal. The bandgap was measured to be around ~ 2 eV.

Conclusions

Here, we reported the synthesis of the TeSe nanorod for the first time using the PLAL technique. Those synthesized rods were characterized by Scanning Electron Microscopy, X-ray Diffraction, and Raman and Photoluminescence Spectroscopy. Those rods will hold great potential for advancing the development of high-performance solar cells and photodetectors.