Novel Xanthate Complexes for the Size-Controlled Synthesis of Copper Sulfide Nanorods

• Published in: Inorganic chemistry Vol. 56; no. 15; pp. 9247 - 9254
• Main Authors: Al-Shakban, Mundher, Matthews, Peter D, Deogratias, Geradius, McNaughter, Paul D, Raftery, James, Vitorica-Yrezabal, Inigo, Mubofu, Egid B, O’Brien, Paul
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Chemical Society 07-08-2017
• ISSN: 0020-1669; 1520-510X
• DOI: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.7b01288

We present a simple, easily scalable route to monodisperse copper sulfide nanocrystals by the hot injection of a series of novel copper­(I) xanthate single-source precursors [(PPh3)2Cu­(S2COR)] (R = isobutyl, 2-methoxyethyl, 2-ethoxyethyl, 1-methoxy-2-propyl, 3-methoxy-1-butyl, and 3-methoxy-3-methyl-1-butyl), whose crystal structures are also reported. We show that the width of the obtained rods is dependent on the length of the xanthate chain, which we rationalize through a computational study, where we show that there is a relationship between the ground-state energy of the precursor and the copper sulfide rod width.