Mesoporous ZnS thin films prepared by a nanocasting route

FISCHEREDER, A; MARTÍNEZ-RICCI, ML; WOLOSIUK, A; HAAS, W; HOFER, F; TRIMMEL, G; SOLER-ILLIA, GJAA

CHEMISTRY OF MATERIALS

AMER CHEMICAL SOC

Lugar: Washington; Año: 2012 vol. 24 p. 1837 - 1845

0897-4756

Mesoporous metal chalcogenides  (e.g. ZnS, CuS, and derived mixed  sulfide or  selenides) show an extremely high potential in technological areas like catalysis, sensors, environmental protection  and  photovoltaics.  Although  chemical  bath  deposition methods  allow  obtaining stable  and  porous  metal  chalcogenide  films  under  mild  and  simple  conditions,  the reproducible  preparation  of  highly  ordered  mesoporous  sulfide  thin  films  has  been challenging so far. Herein, we present a simple and efficient synthetic method to prepare ZnS mesoporous thin films using a combination of a nanocasting approach and a successive ionic layer adsorption and  reaction  (SILAR) process  for  the  infiltration. A mesoporous  silica  thin film, prepared by evaporation  induced self-assembly (EISA), serves as  the hard exotemplate for  the  formation  of  the  mesostructured  zinc  sulfide.  After  selective  etching  of  the  silica framework, a stable and porous ZnS thin film is obtained, which replicates the pore structure of the hard template. A thorough combination of characterization techniques is used to assess the exo-templating process as well as the template removal.