Metallurgical leaching of metal powder for facile and generalized synthesis of metal sulfide nanocrystals

Abstract

Abstract We report the synthesis of high-quality metal sulfide semiconductor nanocrystals through a facile and general metallurgical processes. Metal powders employed as readily available chemicals were metallurgically leached with dithiocarbamate in chloroform solution to form in situ the metal dithiocarbamate complex precursor, which was directly heated under appropriate experimental conditions to produce a variety of metal sulfide nanocrystals. Based on this, 11.8, and 21.5 nm uniform spherical Ag 2 S and 34.5 nm cubic Ag 2 S nanocrystals were synthesized. Binary In 2 S 3 nanocrystals with 9.1 nm were obtained from the reaction of indium and dithiocarbamate. Furthermore, ternary AgInS 2 nanocrystals were prepared from a reaction mixture of Ag, In, and dithiocarbamate in stoichiometric molar ratio. Using this method, the size, shape, and chemical composition of the nanomaterials can be easily controlled, and these as-synthesized metal sulfides exhibit novel optical properties. This facile methodology for the synthesis of metal sulfides can be generally expanded to fabricate other nanocrystals, and the readily available metal elements may provide an alternative approach for the industrial synthesis of nanomaterials.