Facile synthesis of single crystalline sub-micron Cu2ZnSnS4 (CZTS) powders using solvothermal treatmentElectronic supplementary information (ESI) available. See DOI: 10.1039/c4ra12815j

• Main Authors: Chen, Shanlong, Tao, Haijun, Shen, Yizhou, Zhu, Lumin, Zeng, Xiaofei, Tao, Jie, Wang, Tao
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 06.01.2015
• ISSN: 2046-2069
• DOI: 10.1039/c4ra12815j

Single crystalline sub-micron Cu 2 ZnSnS 4 (CZTS) powders were successfully synthesized by a facile solvothermal method, using l -cysteine as sulfur precursor. It was confirmed that pure kesterite structured CZTS powders were synthesized at 400 °C after 5 h, with the irregular polygonal particle size being 500 nm to 1 μm. Interestingly, single crystalline CZTS particles were also obtained by simple solvothermal treatment without post annealing. The H 2 S released from l -cysteine had an impact on the growth of CZTS particles at high temperature. Further, the as-synthesized CZTS powders were used as counter electrode for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) and it is indicated that the CZTS counter electrode based DSSCs show a conversion efficiency of 4.243%. Single crystalline sub-micron Cu 2 ZnSnS 4 (CZTS) powders were successfully synthesized by a facile solvothermal method, using l -cysteine as sulfur precursor.