Even colloidal polytypic nanostructures show promising future in band-gap tuning and alignment, researches on them have been much less reported than the standard nano-heterostructures because of the difficulties involved in synthesis. Up to now, controlled synthesis of colloidal polytypic nanocrsytals has been only realized in II-VI tetrapod and octopod nanocrystals with branched configurations. Herein, we report a colloidal approach for synthesizing non-branched but linearly arranged polytypic I₂-II-IV-VI₄ nanocrystals, with a focus on polytypic non-stoichiometric Cu₂ZnSnS_xSe_4−x nanocrystals. Each synthesized polytypic non-stoichiometric Cu₂ZnSnS_xSe_4−x nanocrystal is consisted of two zinc blende-derived ends and one wurtzite-derived center part. The formation mechanism has been studied and the phase composition can be tuned through adjusting the reaction temperature, which brings a new band-gap tuning approach to Cu₂ZnSnS_xSe_4-x nanocrystals.

© 2012 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved