A tunable library of substituted thiourea precursors to metal sulfide nanocrystals

作者:Hendricks Mark P; Campos Michael P; Cleveland Gregory T; Jen La Plante Ilan; Owen Jonathan S*
来源:Science, 2015, 348(6240): 1226-1230.
DOI:10.1126/science.aaa2951

摘要

Controlling the size of colloidal nanocrystals is essential to optimizing their performance in optoelectronic devices, catalysis, and imaging applications. Traditional synthetic methods control size by terminating the growth, an approach that limits the reaction yield and causes batch-to-batch variability. Herein we report a library of thioureas whose substitution pattern tunes their conversion reactivity over more than five orders of magnitude and demonstrate that faster thiourea conversion kinetics increases the extent of crystal nucleation. Tunable kinetics thereby allows the nanocrystal concentration to be adjusted and a desired crystal size to be prepared at full conversion. Controlled precursor reactivity and quantitative conversion improve the batch-to-batch consistency of the final nanocrystal size at industrially relevant reaction scales.

  • 出版日期2015-6-12