Determination of optimum cation to anion (Cd:S) ratio for the synthesis of mono sized CdS quantum dots through optical properties

Abstract

The CdS quantum dots (QDs) were synthesized using double injection aqueous method and systematic studies were carried to determine optimum cation to anion (Cd:S) ratio to obtain mono sized CdS QDs. An efficient and convenient method is designed by utilizing the optical properties (absorbance and transmission spectra) as qualitative tool. CdS QDs was synthesized by varying cadmium and sulfur concentration from 0.01M to 0.1M and 0.01M to 0.05M respectively keeping MPA and other precursors constant. Through Concentration Optimization by Optical Spectra (COOS) method, it was found that for 0.02M sulfur and 0.04M MPA, 0.03 to 0.05M cadmium was the most favorable concentration and similarly for 0.04M cadmium and MPA the optimum concentration of sulfur was 0.02M. CdS QDs optical band gap varied from 3.09 eV to 3.69 eV with quantum dots size decreasing from 3.22 nm to 2.45 nm, respectively for Cadmium concentration from 0.02M to 0.07M. For Sulfur concentration variation, band gap varied from 3.55 eV to 3.03 eV, with size of QDs increasing from 2.58 nm to 3.33 nm, respectively for concentration 0.01M to 0.05M. All this results shows that synthesized quantum dots were well under quantum confinement effect. Further, the proposed COOS method can be extended to all QDs synthesis to obtain the optimum cation to anion ratio to synthesis QDs with narrow size distribution.