Colloidal synthesis of Sb 2 S 3 nanorods/bars with strong preferred orientation Ivana Lj. Validžić ⁎, Miodrag Mitrić Vinča Institute of Nuclear Sciences, P.O. Box 522, 11001 Belgrade, University in Belgrade, Serbia abstract article info Article history: Received 25 January 2011 Accepted 8 March 2011 Available online xxxx Keywords: Colloidal processing Electron microscopy Semiconductors Solar energy materials X-ray technique We report the synthesis of antimony trisulfide (Sb 2 S 3 ) nanorods/bars via a simple, low-cost and colloidal synthetic method. The as-synthesized Sb 2 S 3 nanorods/bars with different heating times from the moment of appearance of the Sb 2 S 3 precipitate at 240 °C are the longest and thinnest in the beginning (diameters of 50– 100 nm and lengths of 3–5 μm). UV/Vis absorption spectroscopy reveals that the optical band gap energy of the Sb 2 S 3 nanorods/bars slightly decreases with increasing the heating times in the range of 1.54, 1.50 to 1.47 eV at the red part of the solar spectrum. The structure of Sb 2 S 3 for all free samples was refined down to the R-factor of 9.57, 5.43 and 6.19%. The refinement showed that Sb 2 S 3 powder belongs to the orthorhombic type with space group Pbnm (no. 62). It was found that Sb 2 S 3 nanorods/bars predominantly grow along the [010] direction. The preferred orientation parameter (τ) refined against experimental data is quite high and is found to be 1.42, 1.21 and 1.19 for all three samples observed. A decrease in unit cell parameter b followed by increasing the heating times was observed. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Antimony trisulfide (Sb 2 S 3 ) is highly anisotropic V–VI group semiconductors that crystallize in the orthorhombic system (pbnm space group) [1]. Its useful properties make it promising candidate for important applications in diverse area such as solar energy conversion due to its good photoconductivity, thermoelectric cooling technology, and photoelectronics in the infrared (IR) region [2]. So far, various synthetic methods have been employed to synthesize Sb 2 S 3 material [3–5]. As far as we are aware only Deng et al. [6] report the first synthesis of Sb 2 Se 3-x S x nanotubes across the entire compositional range (x = 0 to 3) via a colloidal synthetic method. Here we report the synthesis of Sb 2 S 3 nanorods/bars by the modified colloidal synthetic method. We found that the optical band gap energy and unit cell dimensions slightly decreases with increasing the heating time. Also, Sb 2 S 3 nanorods/bars predominantly grow along the [010] direction and the preferred orientation parameter (τ) is quite high for all three samples observed. No similar results were found in the literature concerning the structure of the as-synthesized Sb 2 S 3 material. 2. Experimental All chemicals (SbCl 3 (99.0 % min Alfa Aesar), S powder (99.999% Alfa Aesar), paraffin liquid (PL) (J. T. Baker), palmitic acid (PA) (95% Materials Letters 65 (2011) 1919–1922 ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +381 118066428; fax: +381 113408607. E-mail address: validzic@vinca.rs (I.Lj. Validžić). Fig. 1. Synthetic scheme and photographs of Sb 2 S 3 nanorods/bars dispersed in isopropyl alcohol. 0167-577X/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.matlet.2011.03.032 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Materials Letters journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/matlet