Acid-induced synthesis of polyvinyl alcohol-stabilized selenium nanoparticles

Abstract

A simple wet chemical method, employing sulphuric acid, has been developed tosynthesize polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)-stabilized selenium nanoparticles from an aqueoussodium selenosulphate precursor. The method is capable of producing sphericalselenium nanoparticles in a size range of about 20–80 nm, under ambient conditions.The synthesized nanoparticles can be separated easily from the aqueous sols bya high-speed centrifuge and can be re-dispersed in an aqueous medium by anultra-sonicator. The effect of concentration of sodium selenosulphate, PVA and acid, aswell as the nature of the acid used, on the size of the selenium nanoparticles hasbeen studied. The synthesized selenium nanoparticles have been characterized byUV–visible optical absorption spectroscopy, x-ray diffraction, thermogravimetricanalysis, differential scanning calorimetry, dynamic light scattering, atomic forcemicroscopy, scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopytechniques.