Multi-scale agglomerates and photocatalytic properties of ZnS nanostructures

Semiconductor photo-catalysis offers the potential for complete removal of toxic chemicals through its effective and broad potential applications. Various new compounds and materials for chemical catalysts were synthesized in the past few decades. As one of the most important II-VI group semiconductors, zinc sulfide (ZnS) with a wide direct band gap of 3.8 eV has been extensively investigated and used as a catalyst in photochemistry, environmental protection and in optoelectronic devices. In this work, the ZnS films and nanostructures have been successfully prepared by wet chemical method. We show that the agglomerates with four successive scales are always observed in the case of the homogeneous precipitation of zinc sulfide. Hydrodynamics plays a crucial role to determine the size of the largest agglomerates; however, other factors should be invoked to interpret the complete structure. In addition, studies of the photocatalytic properties by exposure to UV light irradiation demonstrated that ZnS nanocrystals (NCs) are good photo-catalysts as a result of the rapid generation of electron-hole pairs by photo-excitation and the highly negative reduction potentials of excited electrons. A combination of their unique features of high surface-to volume ratios, carrier dynamics and rich photo-catalytic suggests that these ZnS NCs will find many interesting applications in semiconductor photo-catalysis, solar cells, environmental remediation, and nano-devices.