Synthesis of nanostructured cadmium and zinc sulfides in aqueous solutions of hyperbranched polyethyleneimine

A new simple route for preparing nanocrystals of cadmium and zinc sulfides and their respective core/shell nanostructures in aqueous solution has been developed by precipitation from metal chloride solutions with sodium sulfide in the presence of polyethyleneimine (PEI) hyperbranched polymer. The as-prepared PEI-stabilized nanoparticles were characterized using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV–visible spectroscopy, and flurospectroscopy. TEM showed homogeneous nanoparticle size. The sizes of cadmium sulfide (CdS) and zinc sulfide (ZnS) nanoparticles were about 7–53 and 4–17 nm, respectively, on using different proportions of PEI. The sizes of the core/shell and multilayered nanoparticles of both compounds were 19–24, 23–35, 108–185, and 100–130 nm for CdS/ZnS, ZnS/CdS, CdS/ZnS/CdS, and ZnS/CdS/ZnS compositions, respectively.