One-Pot Aqueous Phase Synthesis of CdTe and CdTe/ZnS Core/Shell Quantum Dots

A facile and economical one-pot strategy has been developed for the synthesis of water-solute CdTe and CdTe/ZnS core/shell quantum dots (QDs) using tellurium dioxide (TeO2) as a tellurium precursor and thioglycolic acid (TGA) as stabilizer without any pre-treatment and inert atmosphere protection. As-synthesized QDs were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), electron diffraction spectroscopy (EDS), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), UV-vis and photoluminescence (PL). The spherical particles were uniformly distributed with the average diameters of 3.2 nm (CdTe QDs) and -5 nm (CdTe/ZnS QDs). By altering the reaction conditions, the emission wavelengths of the CdTe core QDs and CdTe/ZnS core/shell QDs could be tuned from 508 to 574 nm and 526 to 600 nm with narrow full widths at half maximum (FWHM) of 33 to 58 nm, respectively. Meanwhile, on the optimum condition, the luminescence efficiency of CdTe/ZnS QDs can achieve to 74%, which was higher than that of CdTe core QDs (24%).