Structural, Photoconductivity and Photoluminescence Characterization of Cadmium Sulfide Quantum Dots Prepared by a Co-precipitation Method

In this paper, cadmium sulfide (CdS) quantum dots (QDs) are synthesized by a simple co-precipitation method. X-ray diffraction (XRD) confirmed the formation of a cubical zinc blend structure of CdS nanoparticles. Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) images revealed that the CdS QDs are of 2-5 nm in size. The UV-vis absorption spectra showed an absorption peak at 427 nm (similar to 2.90 eV) indicating a blue shift of 0.48 eV as compared to bulk CdS. We estimated the particle sizes with the help of X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns (3.665 nm) and the shift of the band gap absorption in the UV-vis spectrum (4.276 nm), which is very close to the TEM micrograph result. The photoluminescence spectrum shows three major emission peaks centered at 453 nm (similar to 2.73 eV), 526 nm (similar to 2.35 eV) and 551 nm (similar to 2.24 eV) at room temperature, which may be attributed to excitonic transitions, donor-acceptor (D-A) pairs recombination and the sulphur interstitial defects (I-s) present in the band gap. To study the photoconductivity, the field dependence of the photocurrent and the dark-current was assessed, as was the time-resolved rise and decay photocurrent spectrum and wavelength-dependence photocurrent spectrum assessment of the CdS QDs. The time-resolved rise and decay photocurrent spectra exhibited negative photoconductivity (NPC) behavior when the CdS QDs were illuminated with 490 nm light. Such anomalous NPC may be attributed to the light-induced desorption of water molecules. The wavelength-dependence of the photocurrent was found to be close to the absorption and PL spectrum. The photoconductivity properties of the CdS QDs were measured using a thick film of powder without any binder. These CdS QDs can find potential application in optoelectronic devices and photodetectors.