Optical and photocatalytic properties of arginine-stabilized cadmium sulfide quantum dots

Currently, environmental pollution caused by organic compounds leads to severe negative consequences in the human society. Therefore, the removal of these pollutants from aqueous media has become one of the most important issues in environmental science. In the present study, CdS QDs were successfully prepared under aqueous conditions using L-arginine as the stabilizing agent. Optical property determination results reveal that the CdS QDs exhibited strong absorption and photoluminescence in a visible wavelength region. Moreover, the CdS QDs could effectively degrade two organic dyes under visible light irradiation. This suggested that the CdS QDs prepared in this work might be used as the potential photocatalyst to effectively treat the organic pollutants under visible light irradiation. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.