Preparation and optical study of CdS nanocrystals embedded phosphate glass

Abstract A new phosphate glass system with CdS nanocrystals dispersed in glass matrix was investigated. The phosphate glass composition with good stability has been used for preparation of CdS doped glasses. The CdS in the range of 0.5–7.0% has been doped into this glass composition. Effect of CdS content on the optical and other properties has been investigated. The optical characterization of the glass samples showed that with increasing concentration of CdS, there was a red shift in transmission cut-off of the glasses. From the transmission cut-off of each glass sample, the band gap of the CdS nanocrystals embedded glass was calculated. The band gap of CdS particles embedded glass was observed in the range of 3.1–4.1 eV. The present system is compared with CdS nanocrystals doped in silica based glass system. In the phosphate glass system, the UV transmission cut-off's are not sharp and the optical transmittance decreases with increasing CdS content in contrast to silica glass system. The reason for such behavior has been discussed in the present investigation. TEM of the CdS doped phosphate glasses showed CdS particle size in the range of 5–7 nm for lower concentration of CdS and 10–100 nm for higher concentration of CdS. The nanocrystals are non-uniform in size but uniformly dispersed in glass matrix.