Hydrothermal synthesis of highly stable copper sulfide nanorods for efficient photo-thermal conversion

Copper sulfide (CuS) nanostructures have an important application prospect in the field of solar photo-thermal conversion because of their excellent photo-thermal stability. In this paper, nanostructured CuS nanorods were successfully prepared via hydrothermal reaction method. The crystal structure and surface morphology of the as-prepared CuS nanorods were characterized. The optical absorption and photo-thermal conversion performance of the CuS emulsions based on water were studied. The ultraviolet/visible/near infrared (UV/Vis/NIR) absorption spectra tests show that the prepared CuS emulsions have strong optical absorption in both visible light and near infrared light bands. And the photo-thermal conversion results indicate that the CuS emulsions possess good photo-thermal conversion performance, and the maximum temperature of the emulsion reaches about 74.44 °C with the mass fraction of 0.10%. Moreover, in a certain concentration range, the photo-thermal conversion performance will be effectively enhanced with increasing the mass fractions of the emulsions.