Solvo-hydrothermal growth and photoluminescence studies of micro and nano structured Zinc Sulfide for bio-imaging applications

Abstract

The research on nanocrystalline materials have been of great interest for more than 20 years due to its fundamental properties as well as development of technology based on it. Non-toxic semiconducting nanocrystals are important materials with wide range of applications in the areas of biotechnology, medicine, bio-optics and for the fabrication light emitting and harvesting devices. Majority of the II-VI semiconductors possess wide band gap along with high iconicity and are important materials for optoelectronic devices operating under the UV excitation sources. Among the II-VI semiconductors, ZnS is a material with good optical transmission in the visible region with large exciton binding energy of about 40 meV. ZnS usually crystallizes in cubic form which is zinc blende or sphalerite and its hexagonal form is in wurtzite phase. The cubic sphalerite phase of ZnS has a band gap of 3.68 eV whereas the hexagonal (wurtzite) phase has a band gap of 3.77 eV. Moreover, ZnS is a good host lattice phosphor for photonic applications and electroluminescent devices because of its wide band gap. The present thesis deals with the synthesis and photoluminescence studies of micro and nanostructured ZnS by hydrothermal and solvo-hydrothermal method. Thesis is also focused on bioimaging application of these materials.