Gel-incorporated PbS and PbI2 single-crystals

Gel-incorporated single-crystals provide unique combinational properties of long-range order and composite structures, which is desired for semiconducting and conducting materials. However, the reported gel-incorporated single-crystals are limited to insulating crystals. Here, we examine crystals of two typical semiconductors, lead sulfide (PbS) and lead iodide (PbI2), grown from both silica gels and agarose gels. In all the four crystal-gel pairs, single-crystals of the cubic phase of PbS and the hexagonal phase of PbI2 were obtained according to the X-ray diffraction analysis. Dissolution of the gel-grown crystals exposed insoluble materials with the shape similar to the original crystals, indicative of gelincorporation inside the crystals. As such, this work creates a facile strategy to construct 3D heterostructures inside semiconducting single-crystals without destroying their long-range order.