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.