A Novel Wet Chemistry Approach for the Synthesis of Hybrid 2D Free-Floating Single or Multilayer Nanosheets of MS2@oleylamine (M=Mo, W)

A new wet chem. approach, based on low-temp. (360) decompn. in oleylamine of single-source precursors contg. both metal and sulfur, is proposed for the prodn. of stable free-standing nanosheets of MoS2 and WS2. The 1-pot synthesis permits high-quality 2-dimensional nanosheet crystals of MoS2 and WS2 to be obtained with a modular no. of nanolayers for units. The layered materials obtained are covered by a dynamic protective coating of oleylamine that stabilizes the suspension, avoids aggregation and oxidn. phenomena, and could be easily functionalized with other mols. or nanosystems to introduce new properties to the hybrid org.-inorg. nanocomposite. The reaction products were characterized by XRD, TEM, attenuated total reflectance FTIR spectroscopy (ART-FTIR), field emission SEM (FESEM), XPS, TGA coupled with mass spectrometry (TG-MS), and dynamic light scattering (DLS) for particle size distribution (PSD).