Investigations of the thermal treatment effect on the generation of cadmium sulfide clusters in polymeric films

In the last years a special interest has been paid to the field of nanometer-sized semiconductor compound crystalline clusters synthesized in different matrix (inorganic or organic), due to their special physical and chemical properties intermediate between the molecular and bulk limits. To obtain the thin film samples of CdS particles embedded in a polymeric transparent matrix, as bisphenol A polycarbonate, we followed a process containing three important steps: preparation of the so-called 'mother solution', film deposition and thermal treatment. The samples obtained after the first two steps were heat treated at different temperatures (90 deg. C and 150 deg. C) for 0.5 h, 1 h and 1.5 h, and we have analyzed the influence of these parameters on the film quality using UV-VIS spectrophotometric methods. This paper presents a study of the influence of the thermal treatment on the CdS clusters' generation process and film quality and homogeneity. The parameters of the processing procedure of the polymeric film, as the cooling rate, have a great influence on the rate of germination and development of the crystalline phase. A slow cooling rate is a more favorable process for CdS clusters' formation, indicated .by structured features of the fundamental absorption situated between 350-450 nm. When the temperature for thermal treatment increases to 90 deg. C a sharp rise and a shift to shorter wavelengths of the absorption onset edge was observed. This shift proves the existence of a weak quantum confinement effects. We concluded that these two parameters have some equivalent effects on the CdS clusters' generation in polymeric matrix. Varying the treatment duration with a fixed temperature produces similar results as the fixed duration, varied temperature treatment. (authors)