TITLE:
Room Temperature Synthesis of Aminocaproic Acid-Capped Lead Sulphide Nanoparticles
AUTHORS:
Jayesh D. Patel, Frej Mighri, Abdellah Ajji, Saïd Elkoun
KEYWORDS:
Semiconductor; Nanoparticles; Lead Sulphide; Mesoporous; BET; XPS; FTIR
JOURNAL NAME:
Materials Sciences and Applications,
Vol.3 No.2,
February
17,
2012
ABSTRACT: Aminocaproic acid (ACA) mixed methanolic lead acetate-thiourea (PbAc-TU) complex as precursor for fabrication of lead sulphide (PbS) nanoparticles (NPs) has been explained. The size, structure and morphology of as-prepared ACA-capped PbS NPs were systematically characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Transmission electron mi-croscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Uv-vis spectroscopy and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) techniques. The obtained results show that the synthesized PbS NPs are nanocrystalline, size quantized and their agglomeration shows a mesoporous network of 8.7 nm in pore size. The binding nature of ACA molecules on PbS surface was studied by thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and X-ray photoelectron (XPS) techniques. Results indicate that ACA acts as a soft template that restricts the growth of PbS NPs through its binding to Pb surface via nitrogen lone pair.