A rapid and cost-effective laser based synthesis of high purity cadmium selenide quantum dots

A rapid and cost effective method is developed to synthesize high purity cadmium Selenide (CdSe) quantum dots in acetone medium using second harmonic of Nd:YAG nanosecond pulsed laser of 532 nm wavelength. The thermal agglomeration due the nanosecond pulse duration of the laser was successfully eliminated by using unfocussed laser beam and thereby providing a favorable conditions for the synthesis of quantum dots having the grain size of 3 nm. The morphological and optical characterizations like XRD, HRTEM, optical absorption of the synthesized CdSe quantum dots, reveal that the material possesses the similar characteristics of the one synthesized through cumbersome wet chemical methods. Relative to the CdSe bulk material, the synthesized CdSe quantum dots showed a blue shift in the measured band gap energy from near infrared spectral region to visible region, making this material very attractive for many solar energy harvesting applications like photo-catalysis and solar cells.