and less toxic. Recently, TeO2 was explored as the Te 4 synthesis of CdTe QDs.

at different times to control the size of the CdTe QDs. The particles were extracted by precipitation with Jiaojiang 318000, People's Republic of China Full list of author information is available at the end of the articlesource for synthesis of CdTe QDs, but the reduction of TeO2 by NaBH4 in ambient conditions requires a long reaction time and easily produces a black precipitate of CdTeO3 [16-20]. Here, we proposed a new facile synthetic approach for preparing CdTe QDs with tellurium dioxide as a tellurium source. 3-mercaptopropionic acid was ex-plored as both reductant for the reduction of TeO2 and in 100 mL of deionized water in a breaker, and 5.4 mmol MPA was added under stirring. The pH of the solution was then adjusted to 10.0 by dropwise addition of 1 mol/L NaOH solution. Under stirring, 0.5 mmol TeO2 was added to the original solution. The typical molar ratio of Cd2+/Te2−/MPA was 1:0.25:2.7. The monomer was heated in a XO-SM100 microwave-assisted heating system (XO-SM100 Microwave and Ultrasonic combination response system, MW-50%; Xianou Company, Nanjing, China) and * Correspondence: shenmao19820808@163.com1College of Pharmaceutical and Chemical Engineering, Taizhou University,powder was used as the tellurium source and NaBH4 as the reductant, which needs a pretreatment to synthesize the unstable tellurium precursor. The process of preparing CdTe QDs requires N2 as the protective gas at the initial stage [5-10]. Even though Na2TeO3 as an alternative tel-lurium source can also be used for preparing CdTe QDs [11-15], it is toxic and expensive. Therefore, it is very necessary to hunt for a novel tellurium source for the synthesis of CdTe QDs. Compared with Na2TeO3, TeO2 has the same oxidation state of Te and is stable, cheap