Swift Heavy Ion (SHI) irradiation of semiconductor nanostructures is arapidly developing area of nanomaterials research which resultssignificant changes in structural and physical properties of such lowdimensional systems. The present study describes SHI irradiation effect onbare and silica (SiO2) coated semiconductor nanoparticles embedded ininsulating polymer (polyvinyl alcohol) and on a composite of semiconductornanoparticles and conductingpolymer(2-methoxy-5-(2-ethyl-hexyloxy)-pphenylene vinylene). The nanosemiconductor samples of PbS, CdS and ZnS were prepared following aninexpensive chemical route. Characterizations of the samples were carriedout with X-ray diffraction, optical absorption spectroscopy,photoluminescence and transmission electron microscopy. The UV–Visabsorption spectra reveal blue shift relative to bulk material inabsorption energy while PL spectra suggest that surface state and nearband edge emissions are dominating in case of bare and coated samplesrespectively. The samples were irradiated with 160 MeV Ni-ion beam withfluences in the range of 1e12 to 1e13 ions/cm2. The investigation afterSHI irradiation showed fluence dependent luminescence behavior and sizeenhancement of bare nanoparticles while reduction of particle size wasobserved in the composite system. However, coated samples exhibit betterstability upon SHI irradiation compared to the bare one.
