Structure, morphology, and luminescence properties of Electrosynthesized ZnS: Cu, Cl Nanoparticles

Electrosynthesis of zinc sulfide nanoparticles doped with copper and chlorine has been investigated in this study. For the electrosynthesis of ZnS, a constant current pulse of 200 mA cm-2 was applied to zinc nitrate and sodium thiosulfate solution containing 1 M hydrochloric acid in an electrochemical cell. The thin film of zinc sulfide nanoparticles was placed on a graphite electrode. For doping Cl- and Cu+ on ZnS, the modified electrode was placed in copper sulfate solution containing 0.1 M potassium chlorate under a constant potential of -0.9 V for 3 minutes. By changing the concentration of potassium chlorate from 0.1 to 0.01 and 0.0001 M, the amount of doped Cl was variable, therefore; nanoparticles with different luminescence properties were achieved. Based on the X-ray diffraction pattern average crystallite size for nanocomposites is the same and about 34-64 nm. Using scanning electron microscopy imaging it was observed that synthesized nanocomposites have appropriate uniformity. Characterization was performed using XRD and FT-IR methods. The morphology and luminescence properties of these nanoparticles were studied using SEM and UV-Visible.