Effect of air-annealing on the morphological, microstructural and optical properties of CdSe NCs grown into porous anodic alumina template

• Published in: Superlattices and microstructures 2015-07, Vol.83, p.575-587
• Main Authors: Laatar, F., Hassen, M., Smida, A., Riahi, R., Bel Haj Mohamed, N., Ezzaouia, H.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: AFM microscopy; Optical properties; Porous anodic alumina (PAA); Synthesis of CdSe nanocrystals (NCs); Thermal annealing; X-ray diffraction (XRD)
• ISSN: 0749-6036; 1096-3677
• DOI: 10.1016/j.spmi.2015.04.008

•New approach to stabilize the cadmium selenide nanocrystals (CdSe NCs) for applications in nanodevices.•Porous anodic alumina (PAA) was prepared in a two step anodizing process; CdSe NCs embedded on PAA matrix.•Effect of thermal treatment under air on the morphological, microstructural and optical properties of CdSe NCs on PAA. In this work, cadmium selenide nanocrystals (CdSe NCs) were embedded into porous anodic alumina (PAA) template by simple immersion in aqueous solution containing l-cysteine (Cys) functionalized CdSe NCs and water. The prepared samples were heat treated at different temperatures between 150 and 300°C during 30min under air. The effect of thermal treatment under air on the CdSe NCs/PAA has been shown from morphological, microstructural and optical studies. Several characterization techniques such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectroscopy were used to investigate the surface morphology and microstructural properties of CdSe nanoparticles on the PAA template as function of air-annealing temperature. XRD study shows the transformation phase of deposited CdSe nanoparticles on the PAA template from cubic structure to hexagonal structure at 300°C. The morphology of CdSe nanorods array which are into the PAA surface were exhibited by AFM scan. Optical properties of CdSe NCs into PAA have been studied at different air-annealing temperatures using optical absorption and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. The results showed that the crystal quality was significantly improved with the annealing temperature increase, bringing about an enhancement in PL and a decrease in optical band gap from 2.44 to 2.2eV exhibiting a red shift.