A Simple Route to Ruthenium Sulfide Nanoparticles via Thermal Decomposition of Precursor Complexes

Abstract

The research work presented here investigate the use of homonuclear tris-dithiocarbamato ruthenium(III) complexes as single-source molecular precursors to ruthenium sulfide nanoparticles. The dithiocarbamate ligands with their respective precursor complexes were characterized by UV-Vis, FTIR, 1H- and 13C-NMR, and in addition TGA was used for precursors. The absorption spectra confirmed the geometry of tris-chelate ruthenium complexes [Ru(S2CNR2)3] to be octahedral and were very stable both in solution and in the solid state. The optical and structural properties of the ruthenium sulfide nanoparticles were examined using FTIR, XRD, EDS, SEM, TEM, UV-Vis and photoluminescence (PL). FTIR studies revealed that Ru2S3 nanoparticles are capped through the interaction of the –NH2 group of hexadecylamine (HDA) adsorbed on the surfaces of nanoparticles with the prominent band observed around 3330 cm-1 due to v(N-H). The XRD confirmed the successful formation of ruthenium sulfide nanoparticles with a cubic crystal structure within the nano-scale range. The optical band gap(Eg) determined from Tauc plot was found in the range (3.44 to 4.18 eV) values.