Research Article Synthesis, Characterization, and Photoluminescence on the Glass Doped with AgInS 2 Nanocrystals Dewu Yin, 1,2 Lang Pei, 2 Zhen Liu, 2 Xinyu Yang, 1,2 Weidong Xiang, 1,2 and Xiyan Zhang 1 1 College of Materials Science and Engineering, Changchun University of Science and Technology, Changchun 130022, China 2 Faculty of Chemistry & Material Engineering, Wenzhou University, Wenzhou 325027, China Correspondence should be addressed to Xinyu Yang; yangxinyu13@126.com and Xiyan Zhang; xiyzhang@126.com Received 17 August 2014; Accepted 17 September 2014 Academic Editor: Wen Lei Copyright © 2015 Dewu Yin et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. We demonstrated a synthetic process on the glass doped with AgInS 2 nanocrystals through sol-gel method under a controlled atmosphere. X-ray powder difraction and X-ray photoelectron spectra revealed that the AgInS 2 crystalline phase had formed in the glass matrix. Transmittance electron microscopy showed that these AgInS 2 crystals had spherical shape and good dispersed form in the glass matrix, and their diameter distribution was mainly focused on three size regions. Furthermore, the glass doped with AgInS 2 nanocrystals exhibited three photoluminescence peaks located at 1.83 eV, 2.02 eV, and 2.21 eV, which were ascribed to the introduction of AgInS 2 nanocrystals in the glass. 1. Introduction In the last two decades, semiconductor nanocrystals have attracted tremendous attention due to their unique electronic and optical properties [1, 2]. Such nanocrystals have poten- tial applications for future photonic devices and electronic devices such as light emitting diodes, solar cell materials, nonlinear optical devices, and biooptical imaging devices [2– 4]. Typically of semiconductor materials, II-VI-type semicon- ductor nanocrystals have drawn more attention due to their considerable fuorescent properties [5]. But, unfortunately, the constituents of these II-VI semiconductors ofen include some toxic elements such as Cd, As, Pb, Hg, and Se [6, 7], which are not an environmental friendly model. Tus, developing a semiconductor with nontoxic constituents is very important for more wide applications in the future. One thing worth mentioning is the ternary I-III-VI 2 -type semiconductors like AgInS 2 , which has been recognized as an ideal replacement [8–10]. AgInS 2 crystals with the band- gap energy of 1.9 eV, specially, exhibit a chalcopyrite structure [11]. Such AgInS 2 -based materials are ofen used to develop high-efciency Cu(In,Ga)Se 2 solar cells because the lattice parameter of AgInS 2 crystals is almost the same as that of Cu(In,Ga)Se 2 crystals [12]. In particular, some studies showed that some AgInS 2 crystals with nanolevel size dis- tribution and well-defned spherical morphology exhibited considerable photoluminescence and high quantum yield (∼ 41%) [13], indicating that the morphology and size distribu- tion of AgInS 2 nanocrystals should be controlled efectively in practical applications. Tus, how to achieve a suitable morphology and size distribution of AgInS 2 nanocrystals will be very crucial in the synthetic process. Nanocrystals glasses, namely, by adding nanolevel crys- talline particles into the glass matrices, are one of the most interesting issues in materials science. Te reason is that glasses seem to be preferable for optical devices because of their ease of fabrication in desirable shapes and sizes, high transparency, good chemical and thermal durability, threshold to optical damage, and so forth [14], which make them promising matrices for loading diferent nanocrystals, thereby giving glasses some good performances. Conse- quently, a variety of nanocrystals glasses have been developed for many applications, such as solid state laser [15], nonlin- ear media [16], and photonic applications [17]. Under this background, researchers have been trying to employ difer- ent methods for realizing the development of nanocrystals glasses. In this paper, we demonstrated an efective path to achieve the synthesis of the glass doped with AgInS 2 Hindawi Publishing Corporation Advances in Condensed Matter Physics Volume 2015, Article ID 141056, 5 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/141056