Cation exchange synthesis and optoelectronic properties of type II CdTe-Cu2-xTe nano-heterostructures

Kriegel, Ilka; Wisnet, Andreas; Kandada, Ajay Ram Srimath; Scotognella, Francesco; Tassone, Francesco; Scheu, Christina; Zhang, Hui; Govorov, Alexander O.; Rodriguez-Fernandez, Jessica and Feldmann, Jochen (29. November 2013): Cation exchange synthesis and optoelectronic properties of type II CdTe-Cu2-xTe nano-heterostructures. In: Journal of Materials Chemistry C, Vol. 2, No. 17: pp. 3189-3198

Abstract

Rod-shaped CdTe-Cu2-xTe nano-heterostructures with tunable dimensions of both sub-units and a type II band alignment were prepared by Cd2+/Cu+ cation exchange. The light absorption properties of the heterostructures are dominated by the excitonic and plasmonic contributions arising, respectively, from the CdTe and the Cu2-xTe sub-units. These results were confirmed over a wide range of sub-unit length fractions through optical modelling based on the discrete dipole approximation (DDA). Although assuming electronically independent sub-units, our modelling results indicate a negligible ground state interaction between the CdTe exciton and the Cu2-xTe plasmon. This lack of interaction may be due to the low spectral overlap between exciton and plasmon, but also to localization effects in the vacancy-doped sub-unit. The electronic interaction between both sub-units was evaluated with pump-probe spectroscopy by assessing the relaxation dynamics of the excitonic transition. In particular, the CdTe exciton decays faster in the presence of the Cu2-xTe sub-unit, and the decay gets faster with increasing its length. This points towards an increased probability of Auger mediated recombination due to the high carrier density in the Cu2-xTe sub-unit. This indication is supported through length-fraction dependent band structure calculations, which indicate a significant leakage of the CdTe electron wavefunction into the Cu2-xTe sub-unit that increases along with the shortening of the CdTe sub-unit, thus enhancing the probability of Auger recombination. Therefore, for the application of type II chalcogenide-chalcogenide heterostructures based on Cu and Cd for photoenergy conversion, a shorter Cu-based sub-unit may be advantageous, and the suppression of high carrier density within this sub-unit is of high importance.

• Item Type: Journal article
• Form of publication: Publisher's Version
• Faculties: Chemistry and Pharmacy
• Subjects: 500 Science > 540 Chemistry
• ISSN: 0959-9428
• Alliance/National Licence: This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.
• Annotation: First publ. online. Print publ. 2014
• Language: English