From Ultrafine Thiolate-Capped Copper Nanoclusters toward Copper Sulfide Nanodiscs: A Thermally-Activated Evolution Route

摘要

The report shows the size, shape, and composition of pre-synthesized copper nanoparticles can be nanoengineered through exploiting concurrent interparticle coalescence and interfacial carbon-sulfur cleavage in a thermally- activated evolution route. This is demonstrated by thermally-activated processing ofultrafme copper nanoclusters encapsulated with thiolate monolayer toward semiconducting copper sulfide nanodiscs with controllable sizes and shapes. The nanodiscs exhibited controllable and monodispersed sizes depending on the thermal processing parameters, ranging from 5 to 35 nm in disc dimension and 3 to 6 nm in the thickness dimension. These nanodics are stable and display remarkable ordering upon self-assembly. The coupling of the thermally-activated coalescence and C-S bond cleavage to convert the ultrafme Cu nanoclusters toward the formation of copper sulfide nanodiscs is unprecedented for tuning nanoscale size, shape and composition, and could fmd applications in nanoengineering a variety of semiconducting nanocrystals for applications in nanostructured electronic, sensing, and photochemical devices.