Direct-Coated Photoconducting Nanocrystalline PbS Thin Films with Tunable Band Gap

Nanocrystalline PbS thin films are deposited on glass by direct coating from a precursor solution of lead acetate and thiourea in methanol. A single coating has a thickness of 50 nm and greater thicknesses are obtained from layer by layer deposition. The films are smooth and shiny with roughness (rms) of about 1.5 nm. X-ray diffraction studies show that films are cubic PbS with crystallite size about 10 nm. The films are p-type with dark electrical conductivities in the range of 0.4-0.5 S/cm. These films are basically photoconducting. Photoconductivity monotonically increases with increase in thickness. The band gap of the films strongly depends on the thickness of the films. The band gap decreases from 2.4 eV to 1.6 eV as the thickness is increased from 50 nm to 450 nm. The tunability of the band gap is useful for technical applications, such as solar cells and photodetectors.