Surfactant-aided solvothermal synthesis of dinickel phosphide nanocrystallites using red phosphorus as starting materials

A surfactant-aided solvothermal synthesis route has been proposed to produce well-dispersed dinickel phosphide nanocrystallites by using nickel dichloride and nontoxic red phosphorus as starting materials. It was found that the polymeric surfactant polyacrylamide played a crucial role in the reaction dynamic process. X-ray powder diffraction pattern indicated that the products were hexagonal phase with cell constants a = 0.5846 nm, c = 0.3368 nm, which was also confirmed by electron diffraction (ED) pattern. The transmission electron microscopy (TEM) was used to study morphologies of the final products. It was interesting that the average size of dinickel phosphide crystallites decreased from 200 to 20 nm with temperature increasing from 120degreesC to 180degreesC. The photoluminescence (PL) of the as-prepared samples was investigated at room temperature. The results demonstrated that the emitted light of Ni2P nanocrystallites is ultraviolet (peak at 346 nm), which indicated that dinickel phosphide nanocrystallites were potential luminescent materials. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.