Room temperature synthesis of CdS nanoflakes for photocatalytic properties

Herein, we report, preparation of cadmium sulphide (CdS) nanoflakes at room temperature by simple arrested precipitation method. The synthesized CdS nanoflakes were characterized by various techniques such as X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive spectroscopy, Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy, and UV–Visible spectrophotometer. Nanoflakes of CdS were found to be a mixed-phases composed of cubic and hexagonal with average crystallite size of 20 nm. Surface morphology of CdS seems to be nanoflakes. The absorption spectrum was slightly shifted to blue region as compared to the bulk, this indicates that synthesized material is smaller in size. The band gap energy was found to be 2.48 eV. The photocatalytic results reveals that CdS nanoflakes exhibits excellent photocatalytic performance for methyl orange (20 ppm) degradation, under sunlight and UV within 120 min (83 and 95 % respectively).