Observation of the Meyer–Neldel rule in nanocrystalline PbSe thin films

Abstract

In this paper, nanocrystalline lead selenide (nc-PbSe) thin films have been chemically deposited on glass substrates using appropriate chemical reagents in aqueous alkaline media. The structural, morphological, optical and electrical properties of PbSe thin films have been studied. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis indicates that these films have a cubic structure with an average grain size of ∼21 nm. The field emission scanning microscope (FE-SEM) micrograph shows that the films have a dense surface with a smooth granular structure and well-defined grain boundaries. The σ(T) measurements were carried out under vacuum over a wide temperature range (77–350 K) for nc-PbSe films with a thickness of 375 ± 10 nm. The temperature dependence of dark dc conductivity σ(T) in PbSe nanocrystalline (nc) thin films is found to obey the Meyer–Neldel rule (MNR). The MNR correlates the spread in the thermal activation energy of conduction (ΔE) with the exponential pre-factor (σ0) of the Arrhenius conductivity formula.

Evolution of nontrivial Fermi surface features in the band structures of the homologous members Pb5Bi6Se14 and Koumoulis1, Fang2, Chung3 et al. 2020Phys. Rev. B3000View full textAdd to dashboardCite

“…The larger activation energy detected for the m=2 was equal to 75.7 meV and, compared to m=1, is closer to the 87 meV activation energy that has been detected via NMR in the high-temperature regime of other topological insulating materials, such as Bi 2 Te 3 [18,19]. Additionally, previous studies on PbSe referred to the presence of localized states varying from 50-70 meV in the bandgap [15,58,59], which is very close to the obtained values in the present study. Hence, the impact of localized defect states in the narrow bandgap region (interband excitations) should be also considered for the interpretation of the topological insulating properties of the (PbSe) 5 (Bi 2 Se 3 ) 3m family.…”

Study on the growth mechanism and optical properties of sputtered lead selenide thin films

“…Lead chalcogenides are typical narrow band gap materials with the absorption range of 3 μm to 30 μm corresponding to the medium and far infrared range [1], which leads to wide application as infrared detectors [2][3][4], solar cells [5,6] and laser diodes [7][8][9]. In recent years, lead selenide (PbSe) thin films have aroused great concern due to high photoelectric sensitivity and stability even at room temperature compared with other lead chalcogenides, such as PbS, PbTe, etc [10][11][12][13][14].…”

On the structural and thermophysical study of Pb-doped Se-Te-In nanochalcogenide alloys

“…Moreover, the nanostructure synthesis has been analyzed for several materials in consequence of advancement in the characterization and visualization techniques. Recently, the interest has been developed in lead chalcogenide nanocrystalline semiconductors because of their unique size tuneable properties arising from the effect of quantum confinement in addition to have potential applications as detectors of infrared radiation, photosensors, solar energy conversion devices, thermoelectric devices, photodetectors, photoresistors, lasers, nonlinear optical devices, and more recently, as solar control coatings and infrared emitters [3][4][5][6].…”

“…In the present study, nanomaterials synthesis is achieve by using melt quenching technique as this is a simplest, most cost effective as well as proven technique for producing high-quality nanomaterials along with optimum stoichiometry and morphology [5,[34][35][36][37][38]. Other researchers also reported that the progression of inclusion of Pb additives have considerable influence on the growth of nanocrystalline semiconducting chalcogenide materials [1,2,3,4,5,6,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,39,40,41,43]. In some cases, Pb additive act as a modifier in the host system by increasing the number of defects.…”