Effects of a Nonionic Surfactant on the pH-Controlled Hydrothermal Synthesis of CdS Sub-micrometer Particles

We synthesized size-monodisperse CdS submicrometer particles in a short time (6 h) from a solution containing Cd(II), L-Cys and PF127 by simply controlling solution pH using NaOH under a hydrothermal condition. While CdS synthesized without PF127 for 6 h (1) exhibits a bimodal size distribution and a large standard deviation, that synthesized with Pluronic F127 (3) shows the size-monodisperse distribution with a standard deviation smaller than 10%. Interestingly, prolonged reaction time in the case of CdS sample synthesized with PF127 for 72 h (4) induced the degradation of the surfactant, thus lowered the pH, which caused the irregular size distribution. Taken together, the results of present study will offer an opportunity in producing CdS submicroparticles in a convenient and environment-friendly way in a short time (6 h), and can be used in various applications in the future