A solid state nuclear magnetic resonance study on the thermolytic synthesis of CdS nanoparticles in a polystyrene matrix

We report on the optimization of the thermolytic synthesis of cadmium sulfide (CdS) nanoparticles in a polystyrene (PS) matrix. The annealing conditions were tuned on the basis of the indications coming from solid state 113Cd and 13C Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) experiments. 113Cd NMR provided direct evidence of CdS nanoparticles formation. Semi-quantitative 13C NMR experiments demonstrated that good quality samples are obtained by heating up precursor/polystyrene films to 270 °C in vacuum. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and wide angle X-ray scattering (WAXS) experiments revealed structural details of CdS nanoparticles, their average size ranging from 1 to more than 7 nm as a function of the annealing conditions.