Zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles are used in consumer products, leading to increased interests in the fate of them in the environment. One key process governing fate of ZnO will be sulfidation, which will alter their toxicity, chemical composition, size and morphology, and surface properties. A 30 nm ZnO nanoparticle was sulfidized with different Zn/S ratios to obtain different extents of transformation from ZnO to ZnS. Synchrotron based X-ray Diffraction (XRD) was used to characterize chemical speciation of the sulfidized particles (Fig. 1). Between 5% to 100% sulfidation was obtained and the size of completely transformed ZnS particle was calculated to be 4 nm using Riteveld fitting of XRD data. This indicated a dissolution re-precipitation mechanism for ZnO sulfidation. Particle size and morphology, surface charge, and dissolution of sulfidized particles was also measured using TEM, DLS, electrophoretic mobility, and atomic absorption spectrometry to characterize the resulting ZnS or ZnO/ZnS particles.

Sulfidation of ZnO nanoparticles

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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