Ultrasound Induced Synthesis of CdS Nanocrystals Under Continuous Flow

Cadmium sulfide nanoparticles generally exhibit quantum confinement effects when the particle size is less than 10 nm and approaches the Bohr exciton radius. It is a widely used buffer material in solar cells owing to its wide band transmission of solar light and hence used as a window layer in photovoltaic devices. Sonochemical synthesis permits the rapid heating of reactant baths by acoustic cavitation leading to high local temperatures. In this research, results from batch trials for heating and synthesis are reported. These results were used to design experiments for the continuous synthesis of CdS nanoparticles using a sonochemical reactor consisting of a flow cell and a high intensity horn. By utilizing the continuous synthesis approach a more than hundred fold reduction in processing time over batch synthesis for similar product was reported.