Synthesis and crystal structure of bis(O-methyl hydrogenato carbonodithioate)-Pb(II): structural, optical and photocatalytic studies of PbS nanoparticles from the complex

Abstract

Lead(II) methyl xanthate [Pb(S₂COMe)₂] was synthesized and characterized by single crystal X-ray crystallography. The molecular structure showed a distorted tetrahedral geometry around Pb(II) with each monomeric unit linked with another through Pb···S interactions. The compound was used to prepare hexadecylamine capped PbS (HDA-PbS) and oleylamine capped PbS (OLA-PbS) nanoparticles. The PbS nanoparticles were indexed to the cubic PbS crystalline phase with particle sizes of 4.5 – 34.5 nm. The estimated optical bandgaps obtained from the tauc’s plots were 3.47 and 3.30 eV for HDA-PbS and OLA-PbS, respectively, which are blue shifted in comparison to bulk PbS. The photodegradation of methylene blue using PbS as photocatalyst shows that HDA-PbS have the best degradation efficiency of 77.70% after 240 min.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Pb(II) Xanthate
• lead sulphide
• nanoparticles
• photocatalysis
• electrochemistry

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Table 1. Crystal data and structural refinement for [Pb(S₂COMe)₂].

Table 2. Selected bond lengths and angles for [Pb(S₂COMe)₂].

Additional information

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge National Research Foundation and SASOL South Africa for research grant award.