Quantifying Geometric Strain at the PbS QD-TiO2 Anode Interface and Its Effect on Electronic Structures

Trejo, Orlando; Roelofs, Katherine E.; Xu, Shicheng; Logar, Manca; Sarangi, Ritimukta; Nordlund, Dennis; Dadlani, Anup L.; Kravec, Rob; Dasgupta, Neil P.; Bent, Stacey F.; Prinz, Fritz B.

doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b02373

Quantifying Geometric Strain at the PbS QD-TiO₂ Anode Interface and Its Effect on Electronic Structures

Journal Article · Tue Nov 10 00:00:00 EST 2015 · Nano Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b02373· OSTI ID:1370023

Trejo, Orlando ^[1]; Roelofs, Katherine E. ^[1]; Xu, Shicheng ^[1]; Logar, Manca ^[2]; Sarangi, Ritimukta ^[3]; Nordlund, Dennis ^[3]; Dadlani, Anup L. ^[1]; Kravec, Rob ^[1]; Dasgupta, Neil P. ^[4]; Bent, Stacey F. ^[1]; Prinz, Fritz B. ^[1]

Stanford Univ., CA (United States)
Stanford Univ., CA (United States); National Inst. of Chemistry, Ljubljana (Slovenia)
SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States)

Quantum dots (QDs) reflect promise as the absorber in nanostructured thin film solar cells, but achieving high device efficiencies requires surface treatments to minimize interfacial recombination. In this work, lead sulfide (PbS) QDs are grown on a mesoporous TiO₂ film with a crystalline TiO₂ surface, versus one coated with an amorphous TiO₂ layer by atomic layer deposition (ALD). These mesoporous TiO₂ films sensitized with PbS QDs are characterized by X-ray and electron diffraction, as well as X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) in order to link XAS features with structural distortions in the PbS QDs. The XAS features are also analyzed with quantum simulations to probe the geometric and electronic structure of the PbS QD-TiO₂ interface. We show that the anatase TiO₂ surface structure induces PbS bond angle distortions, which increases the energy gap of the PbS QDs at the interface.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRC) (United States). Center on Nanostructuring for Efficient Energy Conversion (CNEEC)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22)

Grant/Contract Number:: SC0001060

OSTI ID:: 1370023

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1257394

Journal Information:: Nano Letters, Journal Name: Nano Letters Journal Issue: 12 Vol. 15; ISSN 1530-6984

Publisher:: American Chemical SocietyCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Photo/Electrochemical Applications of Metal Sulfide/TiO ₂ Heterostructures Zheng, Lingxia; Teng, Feng; Ye, Xiaoying Advanced Energy Materials, Vol. 10, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1002/aenm.201902355	journal	November 2019
Tuning band alignment by CdS layers using a SILAR method to enhance TiO ₂ /CdS/CdSe quantum-dot solar-cell performance Zhang, Bingkai; Zheng, Jiaxin; Li, Xiaoning Chemical Communications, Vol. 52, Issue 33 https://doi.org/10.1039/c6cc01664b	journal	January 2016
Size-dependent exciton binding energy in semiconductor nanostructures He, Yan; Hu, Sumei; Zhu, Weiling Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, Vol. 53, Issue 12 https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6463/ab5f2f	journal	January 2020
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