Chromium-based chalcospinels such as CuCr2X4 and CdCr2X4 (X= S, Se, Te) are magnetic and the preparation and properties of this compounds still remain largely unexplored. The CuCr2S4 is ferromagnetic at room temperature with Curie temperature of 377 K. The main purpose of the current research is design and construction of magnetic CuCr2S4 nanocrystals by using the suitable single-source precursors in order to reach phase-pure nanocrystals. We have used the thermal decomposition of copper diethyldithiocarbamate Cu(DDTC)2 and chromium chloride as the precursors during the hot-injection method. Herein, 0.25 mmol of Cu(DDTC)2 and 0.5 mmol of CrCl3.6H2O were added to the 10 g of Octadecylamine (ODA) and the mixture was heated to 370 °C under N2. 2ml of 1-DDT was heated to 250 °C in a separated flask and has been quickly injected to the stirred solution of the precursors at 370 °C, while not permitting the temperature of the solution decrease under 360 °C because the reaction temperature below 360 °C leads to the formation of nonmagnetic secondary phase of CuCrS2.The stirring of the mixture continued for 1h. The resulting black mixture was cooled, washed and isolated via centrifugation process. The XRD pattern of the phase-pure synthesized CuCr2S4 nanoparticles is illustrated in Fig. 1 which indicated the expected spinel structure (fcc, space group Fd3M) that can be indexed to the cubic structure (ICDD no. 21-0287). Fig. 2 indicates the TEM images of the prepared nanoparticles. According to the high-resolution TEM (HRTEM) image, the represented inter-planar distance of nanorods is 0.30 nm, corresponding to the (311) reflection of spinel CuCr2S4.

Synthesis of magnetic CuCr2S4 chalcospinel nanoparticles using single-source precursors

255th National Meeting (2018)

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