Sonochemical Preparation of GaSb Nanoparticles

Abstract

A room temperature sonochemical method for the preparation of GaSb nanoparticles using less hazardous Ga and antimony chloride (SbCl(3)) as the precursors has been described. The formation of GaSb has been confirmed by means of XRD, EDAX, and XPS characterization. TEM and SAED results show that the as-prepared solid consists of nanosized GaSb crystals with sizes in the range 20-30 nm. The photoacoustic spectrum result reveals that the GaSb nanoparticles have a direct band gap of about 1.21 eV. On the basis of the control experiments and the extreme conditions produced by ultrasound, an ultrasound-assisted in-situ reduction/combination mechanism has been proposed to explain the reaction.

Applications of Ultrasound to the Synthesis of Nanostructured Materials

“…Various metal chalcogenides (e.g., CdS, [77,78] ZnS, PbS, [79] MoS 2 , [80,81] Bi 2 S 3 , [82] CdSe, [77] ZnSe, [83] PbSe, [84] Bi 2 Se 3 , [85] b-CuSe, [86] Cu 3 Se 2 , [86] Cu 7 Te 4 , [87] Cu 4 Te 3 , [87] GaSb, [88] AgBiS 2 [89] , etc) have been prepared by sonochemical synthesis. A typical synthesis of these materials involves the ultrasonic irradiation of an aqueous solution of a metal salt and a chalcogen source (e.g., thiourea for sulfur or selenourea for Se): in situ generated H 2 S or H 2 Se by sonication reacts with metal salts to produce metal chalcogenide nanoparticles.…”

Sonochemistry and Other Novel Methods Developed for the Synthesis of Nanoparticles

“…Ultrasonic irradiation (22 kHz, Ar atmosphere) of Th(IV) b-diketonates Th(HFAA) 4 and Th(DBM) 4 , where HFAA and DBM are hexafluoroacetylacetone and dibenzoylmethane respectively, causes them to decompose in hexadecane solutions, forming solid thorium compounds [141]. The first-order rate constants for Th(IV) beta-diketonate degradation were found to be (9.30-8) Â 10 À3 for Th(HFAA) 4 and (3.80-4) Â 10 À3 min À1 for Th(DBM) 4 , (T ¼ 92 C, I ¼ 3 W cm À2 ).…”

A novel route to prepare and characterize Sn–Bi nanoparticles

“…Suslick and co-workers [18,19], and Kurikka et al [20,21] have made a complete and deep study in this field. Many nano-sized metal and alloy particles prepared by sonochemical method have been reported in the last few years [22][23][24][25]. All the metal or alloy nanoparticles produced by this method used volatile organometallic compounds (usually metal carbonyls) as precursors, which made the process difficult for the following reasons: the as-prepared nanoparticles can easily agglomerate, the preparation processes needs to be performed under inert gas, the precursors have a strong toxicity.…”