Optical absorption enhancement of CdS nanometer crystallites

An elementary model and analytical theory on optical absorption enhancement phenomena with decreasing the nanometer crystallite size is proposed by using the effective mass theory of excitons and taking into account the tunneling effect and the frequency change. With decreasing particle size, the confinement imposed on the relative motion of electron—hole pair enhances the oscillator strength, and the change of transition frequency due to the size quantization blue shift weakens the oscillator strength. For larger band gap materials, the former is dominant, thus the absorption coefficient tends to enhancement as the particle size decreases. Good agreement between the theoretical and the experimental absorption coefficient of CdS is achieved.