Study on Nanoparticles of ZnSe Synthesized by Chemical Method and Their Characterization

The properties of semiconductor nanoparticles depend mainly on their shape and size due to high surface-to-volume ratio. The II – VI semiconductors have many applications such as, LED, acousto-optical effects and biological sensors. The ZnSe nanoparticles have wide-ranging applications in laser, optical instruments etc. because it has wide band gap and transmittance range, high luminescence efficiency, low absorption coefficient. In recent years, much attention was paid on the preparation methods, performances and applications of ZnSe nanoparticles and thin solid films, and a lot of important accomplishments have been obtained. In the present study ZnSe nanoparticles were successfully prepared by reacting Zn(CH₃COO)₂·2H₂O and Na₂SeSO₃ at 343 K. The size of the crystallite was estimated by X-ray diffraction and TEM, whereas EDAX has confirmed of no foreign impurity inclusion in ZnSe nanoparticles. XRD shows the crystallite size of 5.68 nm and TEM gives a distribution ranging from 20 nm to 71 nm. A SEM image shows that the particles are spherical in a shape. Quantum confinement has resulted in the blue shift compared to bulk ZnSe as observed from the absorption spectra of particles dispersed in DMF. We obtained the photoluminescence spectra on these particles with two different excitation wavelength which shows broad band emission peak at 573 nm. Photoluminescence spectra taken with other excitation wavelength also gives sharp emission peaks at 484 nm, 530 nm, 551 nm and 600 nm.