Green Light Emitting Cadmium Sulfide Nanoparticles with Coral Surface Morphology

Cadmium sulfide (CdS) is an important semiconductor material that has been utilized constructively for various modern applications. There were lot of works regarding the preparation of CdS nanoparticles. The present work has utilized a chemical precipitation method with and without using a capping agent. Even though the solvent system used for the preparation is a new one and provides a non-toxic reaction medium, this work mainly focused on the advantages of surface capping on nanoparticles. CdS nanoparticles prepared by surface capping with oleic acid (OA) exhibit many unique properties compared to the uncapped nanoparticles. The coral shaped surface morphology and the bright green fluorescence observed in OA capped CdS nanoparticles were not reported elsewhere. Strong absorption of radiation in the visible as well as in the ultraviolet region with a large band gap was also observed in capped CdS nanoparticles. Blue shift in emission with an intense peak was another unique character observed in the surface capped CdS nanoparticles. Morphological, structural, optical and thermal properties of the capped and uncapped CdS nanoparticles were systematically investigated. Graphic Abstract