Research Projects

This proposal focused on developing series of metal chalcohalide nanocrystals and investigates their optical and semiconducting properties. Chalcohalides constitutes with two anions; one from chalcogen and other from halogen groups. Synthesis of these nanocrystals follow different chemistry in comparison to simple binary semiconductors or alloy nanocrystals. While bulk phase materials of these nanocrystals have been reported for several cases, their nanoscale materials are rare. These are emerged recently while researchers developed ionic perovskite nanocrystals and observed their interesting optical properties. Then, the idea of developing series of metal chalcohalides was taken here and proposed for developing the new series of such materials, and investigate their properties. Among the metals, Bi, S and Pb are taken for first instance as we succeeded obtaining some preliminary data and then to extend other transition metal ions like Cd, Zn, Sn, Mn etc. The complexity of these class of materials is their structure analysis as various compositions in similar materials show similar XRD and hence, seeing atomic placements of metals and two anions in electron microscopic imaging structures of these materials will be configured. These are semiconducting materials and hence, their optical and catalytic properties will also be studied. These will also be attached epitaxially with both metal chalcogenide and perovskite, and their resultant properties will be investigated. As these mostly tune the conduction bands, their presence will significantly help in transferring hot electrons while coupled with other active semiconducting materials.