Facile synthesis and assembly of Cu2S nanodisks to corncoblike nanostructures

The fabrication of haxagonal Cu2S nanocrystals through thermolysis of a copper dithiolate precursor in dodecanethiol and their novel self-assembly structures was investigated. A typical synthesis procedure 0.5 mL of 1,6-hexanedithiol was added slowly to a 25 mL ethanol solution containing 1.2 g of CuCl2. During the dithiol addition the system becomes a slurry because of dithiolate precipitation and after being stirred slowly for 1h the metal dithiolates were separated. The bottle was cooled at room temperature and the resulting brown solution was collected, washed with absolute alcohol several times to remove the byproducts and the excess dodecanethiol and redispersed in ethanol. The SAED pattern was obtained by focusing the electronic beam on the nanodisks. It was observed that the reaction temperature and time both affect the morphology of the Cu2S nanocrystals.