Functional Thin Films and Energy Materials

Articles

Vol. 1 (2025)

Investigation of Structural Stability, Morphology, and Optical Properties of Lead Sulfide Quantum Dots Under the Influence of Acoustic Shock Waves

Submitted
November 18, 2025
Published
2025-12-08

Abstract

Lead sulfide (PbS), due to its high performance, is an interesting semiconducting material for solar cell applications. In this study, the synthesis of PbS by the co-precipitation route was adopted due to a low-cost synthesis procedure. The powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD) technique and Rietveld refinement revealed PbS with a face-centered cubic structure. The optical properties are widely studied using absorption and photoluminescence studies. To check the stability of the sample under high-pressure conditions, acoustic shock waves are imposed on the PbS NPs, and their stability is analyzed under various shockwave-loaded conditions. The impact of acoustic shock waves upon the quantum dots (QDs) is one of the fascinating ideas for active research in material science. The stability of PbS QDs was examined through multiple characterization techniques such as PXRD, HRTEM, SAED, FESEM, EDAX, UV-Visible-NIR spectroscopy, and photoluminescence (PL) for shock-exposed conditions. Our findings reveal that PbS QDs show no significant changes in crystallographic structure and showcase the possibility of bandgap tuning under the high-pressure acoustic shockwaves of 0.59 MPa in the counts of 200 & 400 shock pulses with a 1.5 Mach number. PbS QDs show shockwaves under the impact of acoustic shockwaves, and it may pave the way for suitable applications in fabricating tandem heterojunction solar cells.

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