A Novel Organic-Inorganic Hybrid Composition for Controllably Synthesizing AgI nanocrystals.

The ability to control the shape and morphology of semiconductor macro/nanocrystals is critical to applications such as photocatalysis, electrocatalysis, photonics and nanoelectronics. Despite significant advances in controlling the shapes by thermal decomposition and solvothermal methods, rigorous shape control by low temperature and aqueous phase controlling remains challenging. Herein, a facile synthetic method based on ethylenediamine assisted precursor transformation technique has been developed for the fabrication of AgI nanocrystals. The central features of our approach are the use of ethylenediamine (en) as complexant and the use of polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) as capping surfactants to form Ag(en)xI precursor, which is followed by removing en to form AgI crystals. This work provides new insights into the use of a novel organic-inorganic hybrid composition as precursors for nanocrystals synthesis and offers a potential route to achieve well-defined morphology of inorganic nanostructures with uniform shape and size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]