Deposition of morphology-tailored PbS thin films by surfactant- enhanced aerosol assisted chemical vapor deposition Malik Dilshad Khan a , Shahid Hameed a , Naghmah Haider b , Adeel Afzal c , Maria Chiara Sportelli d , Nicola Cioffi d , Mohammad Azad Malik e , Javeed Akhtar f,n a Department of Chemistry, Quaid-i-azam University, Islamabad 45320, Pakistan b Geoscience Advance Research Laboratories, Geological Survey of Pakistan, Islamabad, Pakistan c Affiliated Colleges at Hafr Al-Batin, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, P.O. Box 1803, Hafr Al-Batin 31991, Saudi Arabia d Department of Chemistry, University of Bari, via Orabona 4, Bari 70126, Italy e School of Materials, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK f Polymers & Materials Synthesis (PMS) Laboratory, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Chak Shahzad, Islamabad, Pakistan article info Article history: Received 3 July 2015 Received in revised form 28 January 2016 Accepted 5 February 2016 Keywords: AACVD Surfactants Thin films PbS SDS abstract In this work, we report the results of deposition of PbS thin films using single molecular precursor, bis(O- isobutylxanthato)lead(II), in the presence of additives namely: sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), Tween and Triton x-100, via aerosol assisted chemical vapor deposition (AACVD). The as-deposited PbS thin films are highly crystalline and exhibited superior adhesion to glass substrates. Powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis confirmed the formation of pure cubic phase of PbS. Thin films deposited using 0.4 mM Triton X-100 as additive resulted in wire like structures while 0.8 mM Triton X-100 deposited thin films comprised of predominantly shoe shaped structures. Further, increase in concentration (1.2 mM) of Triton X-100 deposited films having rod like morphology. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) confirmed that in the presence of SDS, thin films consist of spherical shaped crystallites. Energy dis- persive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and X-ray photon electron microscopy (XPS) of as-deposited PbS thin films was used to study chemical composition of thin films. & 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Nanostructured semiconductor materials (NSMs) have been ex- tensively studied and explored for potential applications [1–3] in solar cell devices [4], self-cleaning coatings [5,6] and photocatalysis [7,8]. The unusual properties of NSMs are size as well as morphology dependent [9]. It has been observed that a slight variation in shape may have substantial effect on desired properties [4,6]. The effi- ciency of the dye sensitized solar cell can be increased up to 10 folds using vertically aligned ZnO nanorods [6,8,10]. Similarly, catalytic activity may be enhanced greatly by controlling the morphology of certain facets e.g.; (111) & (100) which are responsible for catalytic activity of the material, making the material a more active catalyst [3,7,8]. Therefore, the development of morphologically-controlled synthetic routes for nanostructured materials is necessary to explore their potential as more efficient and smart materials. A widely adopted approach for morphologically controlled synthesis is the solution based route to manipulate kinetic factors of growth using polymers, surfactants or by altering pH/or growth temperature [11– 14]. Surfactants play an important role in controlling the morphol- ogy of nanoparticles. They contain metal coordinating groups as well as solvophilic groups. The metal coordinating groups are generally electron donating which coordinate well with electron poor metal atoms in nanocrystals. This surfactant-metal interaction prevents the aggregation and further growth on surfactant bound facets of nanocrystals. The tail of surfactant extends to solvent and therefore determine the solubility of nanocrystals, which in most cases is hydrophobic in nature. In addition to nanocrystal binding, a sur- factant also forms a complex with the reactive monomer species and plays its role in obtaining control over nanocrystal growth [15].A number of cationic/non-ionic surfactants have been explored ex- tensively to study their role in tailoring the shape of as-prepared nanoparticles [3,11–13]. However, the solution based synthesis in- volves complex procedures and reaction conditions and relatively longer reaction time is required. Therefore, a simple, fast and cost effective route is required to meet economic and industrial needs. Chemical vapor deposition is a simple technique to grow thin films on a wide variety of substrates [16]. Over the past few dec- ades, this technique has been extensively explored by various Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/mssp Materials Science in Semiconductor Processing http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mssp.2016.02.002 1369-8001/& 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. n Corresponding author. E-mail address: javeedk@comsats.edu.pk (J. Akhtar). Materials Science in Semiconductor Processing 46 (2016) 39–45