Light-emitting diodes based on nontoxic zinc-alloyed silver–indium-sulfide (AIZS) nanocrystals

We report solution-processed growth of zinc-alloyed silver–indium-sulfide (AIZS) nanocrystals followed by fabrication and characterization of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) based on such nanostructures. While growing the low dimensional crystals, we vary the ratio between the silver and zinc contents that in turn tunes the bandgap and correspondingly their photoluminescence (PL) emission. We also dope the AIZS nanocrystals with manganese, so that their PL emission, which appears due to a radiative transition between the d-states of the dopants, becomes invariant in energy when the diameter of the quantum dots or the dopant concentration in the nanostructures varies. The LEDs fabricated with such undoped and manganese-doped AIZS nanocrystals emit electroluminescence (EL) that matches the PL spectrum of the respective nanomaterial. The results demonstrate examples of quantum dot LEDs (QDLEDs) based on nontoxic AIZS nanocrystals.