Thiamine-assisted hydrothermal synthesis of Ag2S microcrystals and their optical properties

Xingyu Cui; Chen Yuan; Sha Li; Tong Hu; Jiehua Bao; Shuwei Chen

Thiamine-assisted hydrothermal synthesis of Ag₂S microcrystals and their optical properties

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Author(s): Xingyu Cui¹ ; Chen Yuan¹ ; Sha Li² ; Tong Hu¹ ; Jiehua Bao¹ ; Shuwei Chen¹
- Affiliations: 1: College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering , Taiyuan University of Technology , Taiyuan 030024 , People's Republic of China ;
  2: College of Textile Engineering , Taiyuan University of Technology , Taiyuan 030024 , People's Republic of China
Source: Volume 12, Issue 10, October 2017, p. 714 – 716
DOI: 10.1049/mnl.2017.0149 , Online ISSN 1750-0443

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Received 22/03/2017, Accepted 18/05/2017, Revised 09/05/2017, Published 01/10/2017

Facile thiamine-assisted hydrothermal synthesis of silver sulphide (Ag₂S) microcrystals in the water/ethanol binary solution is reported. The reaction conditions including the contents of reactants, solvents and reaction times, were optimised. The morphology, phase composition and optical properties of the as-prepared Ag₂S product were characterised with scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, Raman spectrometry and photoluminescence (PL). The results indicate that the synthesised cubic Ag₂S microcrystals have strong PL in the blue-light range. A possible synthesis mechanism was proposed for the cubic Ag₂S microcrystals. It is noteworthy that no toxic hydrogen sulphide was released from the environmentally friendly synthesis reaction proposed in the present work. This is for the first time that thiamine, an ordinary and cheap biomolecule, was used as the S source for the preparation of Ag₂S microcrystals.

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Thiamine-assisted hydrothermal synthesis of Ag₂S microcrystals and their optical properties

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