Room-temperature direct synthesis of semi-conductive PbS nanocrystal inks for optoelectronic applications

Lead sulphide (PbS) nanocrystals (NCs) are promising materials for low-cost, high-performance optoelectronic devices. So far, PbS NCs have to be first synthesized with long-alkyl chain organic surface ligands and then be ligand-exchanged with shorter ligands (two-steps) to enable charge transport. However, the initial synthesis of insulated PbS NCs show no necessity and the ligand-exchange process is tedious and extravagant. Herein, we have developed a direct one-step, scalable synthetic method for iodide capped PbS (PbS-I) NC inks. The estimated cost for PbS-I NC inks is decreased to less than 6 $·g^-1, compared with 16 $·g^-1 for conventional methods. Furthermore, based on these PbS-I NCs, photodetector devices show a high detectivity of 1.4 × 10¹¹ Jones and solar cells show an air-stable power conversion efficiency (PCE) up to 10%. This scalable and low-cost direct preparation of high-quality PbS-I NC inks may pave a path for the future commercialization of NC based optoelectronics.