Oxygen accelerated scalable synthesis of highly fluorescent sulfur quantum dots |
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| Authors: | Yiheng Song Jisuan Tan Guan Wang Pengxiang Gao Jiehao Lei Li Zhou |
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| Affiliation: | Key Laboratory of New Processing Technology for Nonferrous Metal and Materials (Ministry of Education), Guangxi Key Laboratory of Optical and Electronic Materials and Devices, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Guilin University of Technology, Guilin 541004 China.; Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, A*STAR, Singapore 138634 Singapore |
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| Abstract: | Here, we report a facile and efficient approach for the large-scale synthesis of highly fluorescent sulfur quantum dots (SQDs) from inexpensive elemental sulfur under a pure oxygen (O2) atmosphere. The important finding of this work is that the polysulfide (Sx2−) ions could be oxidized to zero-valent sulfur (S[0]) by O2, which is the accelerator of the reaction. The SQDs prepared by this method possess nearly monodisperse size (1.5–4 nm), high fluorescence quantum yield (21.5%), tunable emission, and stable fluorescence against pH change, ionic strength variation and long-term storage. Moreover, the reaction yield of SQDs reached as high as 5.08% based on the content of S element in SQDs, which is much higher than other reported approaches (generally <1%). The prepared SQDs could be easily processed for widespread applications thanks to their low toxicity and superior dispersibility both in water and common organic solvents. These high-quality SQDs may find applications similar to or beyond those of carbon QDs and silicon QDs.Highly fluorescent sulfur quantum dots could be rapidly and massively synthesized from inexpensive elemental sulfur under a pure O2 atmosphere. |
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