Non-organometallic phosphine-free synthesis of high quality CdTe nanocrystals

Many efforts have been made recently to synthesize high-quality metal telluride nanocrystals in organic media due to their wide range of applications. However, hazardous, air/moisture-sensitive and expensive alkylphosphines were inevitably used in all of these works to prepare the tellurium precursors. In this paper, a novel phosphine-free tellurium precursor is reported for the first time, which was prepared at room temperature by using some common and cheap chemicals. High-quality CdTe nanocrystals were synthesized in octadecene using the phosphine-free tellurium precursor. Meantime, the synthesis temperature was significantly reduced. Our result presents a new strategy to synthesize various metal telluride nanocrystals in a non-organometallic phosphine-free way.