Copper-Ion-Assisted Precipitation Etching Method for the Luminescent Enhanced Assembling of Sulfur Quantum Dots

Qi-Le Li; Lin-Xing Shi; Ke Du; Yong Qin; Shu-Jie Qu; De-Qian Xia; Zhen Zhou; Zeng-Guang Huang; Shou-Nian Ding

doi:10.1021/acsomega.9b04465

Copper-Ion-Assisted Precipitation Etching Method for the Luminescent Enhanced Assembling of Sulfur Quantum Dots

ACS Omega. 2020 Mar 3;5(10):5407-5411. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.9b04465. eCollection 2020 Mar 17.

Authors

Qi-Le Li^{1

2

3}, Lin-Xing Shi^{1

4}, Ke Du¹, Yong Qin¹, Shu-Jie Qu¹, De-Qian Xia¹, Zhen Zhou¹, Zeng-Guang Huang¹, Shou-Nian Ding³

Affiliations

¹ School of Science, Jiangsu Ocean University, Lianyungang 222005, P. R. China.
² Jiangsu Pacific Quartz Co., Ltd., Lianyungang 222005, P. R. China.
³ School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 211189, P. R. China.
⁴ Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Function Control Technology for Advanced Materials, Jiangsu Ocean University, Lianyungang 222000, P. R. China.

Abstract

In this study, we report a metal-ion-assisted precipitation etching strategy that can be used to manipulate the optical properties associated with the assembling of sulfur quantum dots (S dots) using copper ions. Transmission electron microscopy confirmed that the S dots were mainly distributed within 50-80 nm and that they exhibited an ambiguous boundary. After the post-synthetic Cu²⁺-assisted modification was completed, the assisted precipitation-etching S dots (APE-S dots) were observed to exhibit a relatively clear boundary with a high fluorescence (FL) quantum yield (QY) of 32.8%. Simultaneously, the Fourier transform infrared radiation, X-ray photoelectron spectra, and time-resolved FL decay spectra were used to illustrate the improvement in the FL QY of the APE-S dots.