Synthesis and characterization of nanocrystalline copper sulfide powders

Abstract

Nanocrystalline copper sulphide (Cu2-xS) powders were synthesized by chemical precipitation from their aqueous solutions composed of different molar ratio of copper sulfate dehydrate (CuSO4.5H2O) and thiorea (NH2)2CS as source of Cu+2, S-2 ions respectively, and sodium ethylene diamine tetra acetic acid dehydrate (EDTA) as a complex agent. The compositions, morphological and structural properties of the nanopowders were characterized by energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), scanning electron microscope (SEM), and X-ray diffraction (XRD), respectively. The compositional results showed that the copper content was high and the Sulfur content was low for both CuS and Cu2S nanopowders. SEM images shows that all products consist of aggregate of fine nanospheres with uniform distribution and the size of the particles formed are in nanometer range. XRD results revealed that the obtained powders contains a mixture of copper sulfide phases specially the intermediate phases and the rough estimate of the average crystallite size using the Scherrer formula gives a range of values (4.1-36.9) nm.