Colloidal synthesis of Sb2S3 nanorods/bars with strong preferred orientation

We report the synthesis of antimony trisulfide (Sb2S3) nanorods/bars via a simple, low-cost and colloidal synthetic method. The as-synthesized Sb2S3 nanorods/bars with different heating times from the moment of appearance of the Sb2S3 precipitate at 240 °C are the longest and thinnest in the beginning (diameters of 50-100 nm and lengths of 3-5 μm). UV/Vis absorption spectroscopy reveals that the optical band gap energy of the Sb2S3 nanorods/bars slightly decreases with increasing the heating times in the range of 1.54, 1.50 to 1.47 eV at the red part of the solar spectrum. The structure of Sb2S3 for all free samples was refined down to the R-factor of 9.57, 5.43 and 6.19%. The refinement showed that Sb2S3 powder belongs to the orthorhombic type with space group Pbnm (no. 62). It was found that Sb2S3 nanorods/bars predominantly grow along the [010] direction. The preferred orientation parameter (τ) refined against experimental data is quite high and is found to be 1.42, 1.21 and 1.19 for all three samples observed. A decrease in unit cell parameter b followed by increasing the heating times was observed.