Facile microwave-combustion synthesis of wurtzite CdS nanoparticles

In this study we first report microwave-combustion synthesis of faceted CdS nanoparticles by using cadmium thiocyanate complex as a single source precursor. This is the first example of a metal-thiocyanate (M-SCN) complex being used as a source for metal sulfides (M-S) preparation in a microwave-combustion process. The synthesized CdS was characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), field mission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM). The by-product assisted combustion synthesis yields CdS nanoparticles with the mixtures of octahedral geometries, hexagonal, and triangle plate morphologies and the sizes were found to be 100 nm to 5 microm. The XRD patterns imply the formation of well crystallized wurtzite CdS. The influence of cadmium and sulfur precursors and microwave irradiation time on the morphology of CdS nanoparticle was also investigated. The cadmium and sulfur precursors strongly influenced the CdS morphology and increasing the microwave irradiation time and intensity has no effect on the CdS morphology. In addition, a plausible mechanism of CdS nanoparticle formation has been proposed in this research.