Síntese e Caracterização da liga Sn2SSe nanoestruturada obtida por Moagem Mecânica de Alta Energia

Abstract

The study of tin chalcogenides SnX (X = O, S, Se, or Te) has attracted great attention of researchers due its intrinsic semiconductor characteristics. However, the binary compositions SnSe and SnS are the most studied at the present time because of the recently reported high value of ZT presented by the orthorhombic structure Pnma (SASSI et al., 2014; ZHAO et al., 2014), besides its anisotropic (AGARWAL et al., 2000) and polymorphic (MICHIELON DE SOUZA et al., 2016) characteristics. In this context, this research suggests the formation of a solid solution substitution Sn2SSe produced by mechanical alloying in two milling times, 1h and 10h. The structure, morphology and thermal behavior of the alloys were investigated using the following techniques: X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Energy-Dispersive Analysis of X-ray (EDX), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC), Thermal Treatment (TT), Fusion Process and Rietveld (MR) structural refinement method. The characterization by XRD confirmed that the produced alloys are constituted by a layered orthorhombic Sn2SSe single phase (space group Pnma). However, the sample produced in 10h also has the contaminant phase SnO2. The data adjusted by the Rietveld method allowed estimating the average crystallite size of 17,8nm and 19,6nm for the ternary phase Sn2SSe for samples with 1h and 10h of milling respectively. EDX did not show the contaminant phase present in the sample with 10h of milling, unlike XRD together with MR that revealed a relatively low amount of the contaminant about 7,6%. The DSC performed between 30o and 550oC in the uncontaminated sample was studied in concomitance with the TT and the melting process. The results showed the thermal instability of the sample and possible evaporation of Se and S elements above 240oC. The SEM showed that the alloy particles are irregular and of varying sizes.