Iron pyrite has seen a renewed interest in the past few years as a promising earth-abundant, non-toxic semiconductor material for solar energy conversion. Pyrite has many appealing properties such as direct/indirect bandgaps of 1.03 & 0.95 eV, large absorptivity of 6×10~5 cm~(-1), and high carrier mobility (for single crystals). However, recent attempts to make solar cells using pyrite nanostructures or thin films have been hampered by the presence of impurity phases (such as the marcasite polymorph)' and an observed defect-induced degenerately-doped behavior, which lead to low or no photovoltage. Even though we have shown methods to synthesize phase-pure pyrite nanowires, nanorods, nanobelts and nanoplates. To date, the only means of synthesizing phase purity pyrite thin films requires a harsh sulfidation step at high temperatures to eliminate the other impurity phases.
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