Elemental Ge has a small indirect band gap (0.661 eV) and a large Bohr radius (24 nm), which enables tunable emission energies through quantum confinement. However, its indirect bandgap limits their competency as a promising photovoltaic material. Computations indicate that doping germanium with tin (up to 6%) may result in a direct band gap material. Thus, a robust and facile synthetic approach is required for the synthesis of Ge-Sn heterostructure nanocrystals. Recently, we and others introduce a simple and efficient approach to manipulate the composition, size, and morphology of nanocrystals through fine tuning the chemical reactivity of the molecular precursors. We explored Ge-Sn heterobimetallic single source precursors with tunable substituents (R<sub>3</sub>GeSnR’<sub>3</sub>), which already contains a preformed Ge-Sn bond, as potential precursors for Ge-Sn nanocrystal synthesis. Utilizing computations to select three single source precursors with different Ge-Sn bond strengths, we experimentally studied the relationship between the chemical reactivity of precursors and the size, morphology, and composition of Ge-Sn nanocrystals.

Computational and experimental development of heterobimetallic single source precursors to Ge-Sn heterostructures

255th National Meeting (2018)

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