Facile dissolution of selenium and tellurium in a thiol–amine solvent mixture under ambient conditions

Abstract

Despite their extremely low solubility in most solvents, hexagonal grey selenium and tellurium are shown to be remarkably soluble in binary mixtures of thiols and ethylenediamine (en) at room temperature and ambient pressure. A 1 : 4 vol/vol mixture of ethanethiol (EtSH) and en gave saturated solutions of 38 and 9.3 wt% for grey selenium and tellurium, respectively. Crystalline and phase-pure chalcogen is easily recovered from solution by drying and mild heat treatment at 250 C (for selenium) or evaporation at room temperature (for tellurium). To demonstrate utility for these dissolved chalcogens, it was shown that elemental antimony readily reacts with the dissolved selenium to give a stable, solution processable Sb-Se precursor solution. In the same way, elemental tin reacts with the dissolved tellurium to generate a Sn-Te precursor solution. Upon solution deposition and heat treatment to 250 C, these precursor solutions yielded crystalline Sb 2 Se 3 and SnTe.

High-performance shape-engineerable thermoelectric painting

“…The Sb 2 Te 3 -based ChaM was synthesized by dissolving bulk elemental Sb and Te in a thiol–diamine mixture343536 instead of the widely used a N 2 H 4 solvent252627283738394041 due to its high-level toxicity. Sb 3 d 3/2 , Sb 3 d 5/2 and Te 3 d 5/2 peaks corresponding to metallic bonding peaks are identified in the X-ray photoelectron spectra (Supplementary Fig.…”

An Antimony Selenide Molecular Ink for Flexible Broadband Photodetectors

“…Our one-pot synthesis method is based on a molecular ink prepared by directly mixing elemental antimony and selenium into a solution of ethylenediamine (EDA) and 2-mercaptoethanol (ME). [42] This is the first time, to our knowledge, that this facile synthesis method has been used to fabricate Sb 2 Se 3 photodetectors. Chemical, structural and optical properties of the NWs obtained from this technique are characterized.…”

Earth abundant CuSbS2 thin films solution processed from thiol–amine mixtures

“…To overcome this challenge, we first reported in 2013 a binary solvent system comprised of a short chain alkanethiol and ethylenediamine (termed an "alkahest"), which we have since demonstrated to have appreciable solvent power to rapidly dissolve numerous bulk materials under ambient conditions. [7][8][9][10][11][12] The resulting inks can be readily solution processed because of the appropriate solvent volatility, and upon thermal annealing at low temperatures, give phase--pure semiconductor thin films. For example, this thiol--amine solvent system has been used by Arnou et al, Zhao et al, and Zhang et al to solution process thin films of multinary semiconductors, such as CIS, CIGS, and CZTS.…”