Colloidal synthesis of wurtzite CuInS2 nanocrystals and their photovoltaic application

• Metastable wurtzite structure CuInS2 semiconductor nanocrystals have been successfully synthesized by a hot injection method.
• The solar cells have been fabricated via as-synthesized wurtzite CuInS2 nanocrystals for the first time.
• The J–V of solar cell displays that wurtzite CuInS2 nanocrystals could be directly applied in the thin film solar cells.

Ternary wurtzite CuInS2 nanocrystals were successfully synthesized and characterized by X-ray powder diffraction, energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry, transmission electron microscopy and UV–vis spectrometry. In this paper, the solar cell is fabricated by as-synthesized wurtzite CuInS2 nanocrystals as absorber layer. The J–V property of the CdS/CuInS2 solar cell shows that the open-circuit voltage is 0.409 V and the short-circuit current is 0.5 mA/cm2 under 1.5 G illumination. All of J–V result displays that as-synthesized CuInS2 nanocrystals can be directly applied in thin film solar cells.