Structural and optical properties of PbSe nanostructure thin films prepared by inert gas condensation

•We prepare PbSe in the nanostructure thin film by means of Inert Gas Condensation (IGC).•We study the structural properties using GIIXD and TEM.•We study the optical properties of PbSe nanocrystalline thin film.

Lead Selenide (PbSe) nanostructure thin films synthesized via inert gas condensation (IGC) technique. The structure of as-prepared PbSe nanostructure thin films, were studied using Grazing incident in-plane X-ray diffraction (GIIXD). The study reveals that all films crystallized in cubic structure. The particle size (Ps) of the films, were calculated from X-ray diffraction to be ~5, 8 and 11 nm for film thicknesses 20, 46 and 87 nm respectively which have been confirmed with those determined from transmission electron microscope (TEM) micrographs. The optical energy gap was found to be increases from 2.22 eV to 2.37 eV as particle size decreases from 11 nm to 5.5 nm. In addition, the band tail width increased with decreasing the particle size but the refractive index increases with increasing the particle size of the prepared films.

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