Ag₂Se is a heavy-metal free, low band gap semiconductor that is currently attracting much attention in several fields. Remarkably, its high Seebeck coefficient and its low thermal conductivity have made of Ag₂Se a definitely promising thermoelectric material. Considering that material nanostructuration often entails a significant increase of the ZT figure of merit with respect to the bulk, the synthesis and study of Ag₂Se nanocrystals and of its nanostructured derivatives seems exciting and definitely deserves an effort.

With regard to the synthesis of metal-Ag₂Se hybrid nanocrystals, very few examples are currently available in the literature and none of them has addressed their potential applications.

The aim of this work is studying the ternary Au-Ag-Se system at the nanoscale in order to figure out appropriate synthetic protocols for the controlled growth of hybrid and compositionally-controlled Ag2Se-based nanocrystals and perform an in-depth structural characterization of the materials obtained while also studying the thermoelectric potential of this new ternary nanosystem.

Figures:

Figure 1. HRTEM Image of the Ag3AuSe2 ternary semiconductor nanocrystals. Experimental image is compared to image simulations.

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EMC Abstracts - https://emc-proceedings.com/abstract/synthesis-and-characterization-of-ag2se-based-hybrid-and-ternary-semiconductor-nanocrystals-with-potential-termoelectric-applications/