Eddygp - 28-1-2017 at 11:43
I have always found nanocrystals fascinating, they tend to have very interesting optical behaviours (absorptions, of course, but also fluorescence and
phosphorescence - interesting!) and they are just really amazing materials to synthesise, to know that it's such a small thing.
Now, there is a slight problem. In papers like this one, hexadecylamine, diethylzinc and trioctylphosphine are required. the funny bit is that most nanoparticle articles will require similar
conditions to form any interesting product (literally, just check up any papers for cadmium sulfides and selenides etc and you'll find the same
thing).
This brings an interesting question. What nanocrystals are immediately feasible to synthesise by a home chemist (and at least half-interesting)?
Or better still, how can we modify certain syntheses (like the one in the link) to make it approachable?
There must be quite a few possible ones out there, surely, plus there must be ways around it to prepare colloidal particles (inorganic) without
requiring so many exotic reagents.
Dan Vizine - 28-1-2017 at 12:13
This reminds me of working on sol-gel systems, where templating was an important issue and big, clunky molecules were needed.
Without knowing much about the mechanism (I couldn't access your ACS reference), the mere mention of hexadecylamine/trioctylphosphine suggests that
these exotics are necessary because of their specific properties. Otherwise, there are much more available and cheaper chemically similar options
around. But they aren't used and I suspect it's because they just won't work.
Entry into this arena by other routes will be difficult, but seemingly greater obstacles have been overcome. Just FYI, the amine is available in the
UK by a simple e-mail http://www.cms-chemicals.com/cms/website.nsf/(allcategorycms)/14463AE9891C3BE980256E5F00355B68
and Alibaba has sellers willing to sell as little as 10 g of the phosphine.
Et2Zn, of course, is a different matter. But I know you have the ability to get there from the Grignard reagent if you can't find it.
gatosgr - 29-1-2017 at 14:26
It's possible to make oxides by using nitrate salts and a capping agent in water, let it sit for a day and its done.
zed - 31-1-2017 at 16:34
Ummmm. Your question brought to mind Silver Chloride. Pretty damned small crystals, without even trying.
Now, when I went to look up these little miscreants, I mistakenly typed in NaI.
And........ http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.jpcc.6b04552
Silver Chloride? Yeah. That too. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/264713961_fig1_Fig-1-A-s...
[Edited on 1-2-2017 by zed]
[Edited on 1-2-2017 by zed]