Fatty acid-assisted synthesis of CdS microspheres: physicochemical properties and photocatalytic activity

•Fatty acid-assisted high yield synthesis of cauliflower-like mesoporous CdS MSs.•The as-synthesized CdS MSs exhibit good physicochemical properties.•The as-synthesized CdS MSs shows pronounced photocatalytic ability to degrade RhB.

This work deals with fatty acid-assisted high yield synthesis of cadmium sulfide (CdS) mesoporous microspheres (MSs). The synthesis was conducted by solvothermal treatment of thiourea (TU) mixed cadmium–oleate (Cd–O) complex precursor at 180 °C. The Cd–O complex sulphurized upon thermal decomposition of TU and produced OA-capped CdS nanocrystals (NCs) composed cauliflower-like mesoporous CdS MSs with an average size of 1.5 μm. The as-synthesized CdS MSs exhibit good physicochemical properties. Moreover, the as-synthesized CdS MSs showed pronounced photocatalytic activity to degrade rhodamine B (RhB) in aqueous medium. This suggested that the as-synthesized CdS MSs might be used as a photocatalyst to treat the organic pollutants under visible light irradiation.