Reaction of alkylamine surfactants with carbon dioxide: relevance to nanocrystal synthesis.
Exposure of tetradecylamine, hexadecylamine, and octadecylamine to CO(2) results in their transformation to alkylammonium alkylcarbamate (AAAC) pairs, which we find is a major source of irreproducibility in nanoparticle synthesis. Controlled exposure to CO(2) allows for highly uniform, ultranarrow ZnS nanorods coated with tetradecylamine to be reproducibly obtained in a single step. The crystal structures of the alkylamines and their AAAC analogs were investigated by powder X-ray diffraction and their isostructural three-dimensional unit cells are reported.
Belman
Nataly
N
Department of Materials Engineering and Ilse Katz Institute of Nanotechnology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel.
Israelachvili
Jacob N
JN
Li
Youli
Y
Safinya
Cyrus R
CR
Bernstein
Joel
J
Golan
Yuval
Y