Fragmentation mechanism of the generation of colloidal copper(i) iodide nanoparticles by pulsed laser irradiation in liquids

Abstract

Pulsed laser ablation in liquids (PLAL) is a versatile route to stable colloids without the need for stabilizing agents. The use of suspensions instead of bulk targets further simplifies the experimental set-up and even improves the productivity. However, the utilization of this approach is hindered by limited knowledge about the underlying mechanisms of the nanoparticle formation. We present the synthesis of copper(i) iodide nanoparticles via ns-pulsed laser irradiation of CuI powder suspended in water or ethyl acetate. A thorough study of the nanoparticle size by transmission electron microscopy reveals a log-normal distribution with a mean diameter of 31 nm (±11 nm) in water and 18 nm (±7 nm) in ethyl acetate. The duration of the laser irradiation appears to have only a minor influence on the size distribution. Selected area diffraction and electron energy-loss spectroscopy verify the chemical composition of the generated CuI nanoparticles. While comparable precursors like CuO and Cu3N follow a reductive ablation mechanism, a fragmentation mechanism is found for CuI. With a productivity of 1.7 μg J(-1) this pulsed laser fragmentation in liquids (PLFL) proves to be an efficient route to colloidal CuI nanoparticles.

Synthesis of blue-shifted luminescent colloidal GaN nanocrystals through femtosecond pulsed laser ablation in organic solution

“…When laser pulse width decreases from hundreds of picoseconds to femtosecond regime, the structure of the product alters from near amorphous to crystalline nature. structures, both in single and polycrystalline structures but metastable cubic structures (Schaumberg et al 2015). It shows that along with the ablation, fragmentation (Lau and Barcikowski 2015) might be the main generation mechanism of GaN nanoparticles from GaN powder in liquid.…”

Modelling and validation of particle size distributions of supported nanoparticles using the pair distribution function technique

“…The analysis of particle size distributions (PSDs) is very important for reactions that are sensitive to catalyst size, such as those involving the cleavage of molecules like CO, O 2 , N 2 , NO, CH 4 , NH and C-C (Van Santen, 2009). PSDs are observed in supported (Treacy, 1999;Zhang et al, 2015;Mitrikas et al, 2001;Schaumberg et al, 2015) and unsupported metal catalysts (Schaumberg et al, 2015;Mahajan et al, 2015) and occur because during their growth catalysts follow multiple agglomeration steps with different rate constants (Finney et al, 2012), resulting in particles with different diameters (Bayram et al, 2015).…”

“…More recently, the program DiffPy Complex Modelling Infrastructure (DiffPy-CMI) was developed, which allows the refinement of a structural model using any shape function, including PSDs (Juhá s et al, 2015). A lognormal size distribution (LNSD) is regularly used to describe the PSD of other materials (Mitrikas et al, 2001;Schaumberg et al, 2015;Leoni & Scardi, 2004). For this distribution, the form factor (r) is defined as…”

High‐Purity Hybrid Organolead Halide Perovskite Nanoparticles Obtained by Pulsed‐Laser Irradiation in Liquid

“…[2,29,35] An excesso fs urfactants and alkylammonium halide is typically required to increaset he solubility of the intermediate metal-halide species. In recent years, PLIL has been successfully exploited to obtain metal, [41][42][43][44][45][46][47] oxide, [48][49][50] semiconductor, [51][52][53][54][55] and hybrid [56][57][58] nanostructures with high purity and controlled size, even at high pressure. [8,29,36] As demonstrated in recent studies, this synthetic approachs ometimes produces am ixture of HyP nanoparticles and nanoplatelets.…”

“…[2] Here we used pulsed-laser irradiation in al iquid environment (PLIL) to obtain ac olloid of HyP-NPs in CHCl 3 in one step withouta ny additive,s urfactant, or excess chemical agent. In recent years, PLIL has been successfully exploited to obtain metal, [41][42][43][44][45][46][47] oxide, [48][49][50] semiconductor, [51][52][53][54][55] and hybrid [56][57][58] nanostructures with high purity and controlled size, even at high pressure. [59] The combined application of this laser-assisted synthetic approach with recently reported procedures for recycling optoelectronic devices that contain hybrid perovskites [60] will open interesting perspectives for the development of low-cost and sustainable HyP-based technologies.…”