A chemical-assisted element direct-reaction method is developed to synthesize ZnSe compound semiconductor material at a relatively low temperature (～1000 C). ZnSe polycrystal was obtained in the closed-tube systems with Zn-Se, Zn-Se-Zn(NH3)2Cl2, Zn-Se-NH4Cl and Zn-Se-ZnCl2. The as-synthesized samples were tested by X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and analyzed by thermodynamic numerical method. The results demonstrate that the synthesis efficiency is higher than 99.96% for Zn-Se-ZnCl2 system at around 1000 C for 3 weeks. It also exhibits that not only temperature, but also low apparent ratio of volume and surface area of the source materials and higher ZnCl2 content are required to achieve high synthesis efficiency. A SeCl transporting reaction synthesis process is proposed based on the thermodynamic analysis.
