Reaction engineering studies of the continuous synthesis of CuInS2 and CuInS2/ZnS nanocrystals

• Facile fully continuous synthesis route for CuInS2 and CuInS2/ZnS nanocrystals.
• CuInS2 nanocrystal preparation with high QY and good reproducibility.
• QY evolution in the CuInS2/ZnS nanocrystals by batch route.
• Complex strategy for preparing shell formation.

CuInS2 core and CuInS2/ZnS core/shell nanocrystals were synthesized by a facile continuous route. The as-prepared core and core/shell nanocrystals exhibit photo-luminescence with fluorescence quantum yield (QY) of 20–30% and 50–60%, respectively. In order to achieve high QY of CuInS2/ZnS core/shell nanocrystals, multi-temperature and multi-injection strategies were exploited. As far as we know the quantum yield of the core is the highest compared to reports published until now. The results indicated that high quality CuInS2 core and CuInS2/ZnS core/shell nanocrystals synthesis is feasible by micro-reactor technology under proper flowrate and temperature. More importantly, the superior stability of reaction conditions greatly improved the reproducibility of the experiments which opens a new route to synthesize these non-toxic nanocrystals at large scale.

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