Transition metal phosphide materials have found themselves at the forefront of research revolving around energy applications. Due to the vast range of properties possessed by marginally different phase compositions, binary and ternary metal phosphides are utilized as catalysts, semi-conductors and magnetocaloric materials along with many others. These attractive properties, which are highly phase dependent, call for a versatile and cost effective synthesis route for various phosphide materials without sacrificing properties important at the nanoscale such as particle size and morphology. The primary focus outlined in the work of this dissertation pertains to a versatile wet chemical synthesis capable of producing multiple phases of binary and ternary phosphides containing one or more of the transition metals cobalt, iron and nickel. These metals were of particular interest due to the proven catalytic activity of iron, cobalt or nickel binary phases and the lack of research conducted on the corresponding ternary phases. The challenge presented by wet chemical synthesis methods is the ability to separate different crystal phases of metal phosphide in a short amount of time, with less toxic and lower cost chemicals, and a simple synthetic process with the ability to produce products on a larger scale. Oleylamine was used as a solvent, capping agent and reducing agent along with trioctylphosphine or triphenylphosphine as a phosphorus source. Many binary phosphide phases were synthesized with the same method and purity of phase was controlled primarily with temperature or phosphorus to metal ratio (P:M). At lower temperatures (290-320°C) or lower P:M (4:1) Ni3P,Ni2P, Fe2P, and Co2P were synthesized while higher temperatures (330-360°C) or higher P:M (22:1) produced Ni5P4, Ni12P5, FeP and CoP. Ternary phosphides FeCoP and CoNiP were also successfully synthesized at temperatures of 300-330°C with small excesses of phosphorus (2-5 molar excess). Preliminary catalytic studies for the evolution of hydrogen gas were conducted to test the efficacy of phosphide materials produced via the simplistic oleylamine method. Ni2P was found to have the highest activity toward hydrogen evolution with an overpotential of 320 mV which is comparable and in some cases better than other unsupported phosphide catalysts of the same phase. The ability to control phase composition using a simple, cost effective wet chemical synthesis is promising for the future production of active metal phosphide materials.

<p>  </p> <p>A staggering number of problems in materials chemistry relate to controlling the assembly of matter at <10 nm scales, including those with applications in nanoelectronics, energy harvesting, and biomedical device design. It is difficult to achieve precise chemical patterning at the short length scales required for such applications using traditional top-down fabrication methods (<em>e.g., </em>lithographic techniques). On the other hand, biological systems create high-resolution chemical patterns with remarkable efficiency, by assembling simple molecular building blocks with nm-scale features (<em>e.g.,</em> nucleotides, amino acids, lipids) into structurally complex motifs capable of carrying out the diverse functions required for life. </p> <p>Drawing inspiration from the diverse structures and functions of lipids in biological membranes, this work uses lipids to create high-resolution chemical patterns at interfaces, control the growth and self-assembly of nanocrystals, and to facilitate interactions that precisely template nanocrystals at chemically patterned surfaces.</p> <p>Functional alkanes assemble into striped phase monolayers on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG), in which the alkyl chains are oriented parallel to the substrate, expressing both the polar and nonpolar regions of the amphiphile at the environmental interface. The same is true for diyne phosphoethanolamine (dPE), a phospholipid with a zwitterionic headgroup. When assembled into striped phases on HOPG, the headgroup zwitterions of dPE are confined in 1-nm-wide rows of functional groups with a pitch of ~7 nm, resulting in ordered arrays of orientable dipoles at the HOPG surface. The chemistry of dimensionally confined functional groups is distinct from bulk solution phase chemistry, and in this case enables powerful directing effects which can be used to template the adsorption of ultranarrow gold nanowires (AuNWs) in precise alignment with the template stripes. </p> <p>Technical grade oleylamine (<em>cis</em>-9-octadecen-1-amine, OLAm, 70% purity) serves as the capping ligand for the AuNWs used in this work, and additionally plays an important role in the assembly of AuNWs at dPE/HOPG surfaces. While technical-grade reagents enable cost-effective and scalable production of materials, variation in the composition of impurities between different batches have significant impacts on nanocrystal morphology and assembly. We show that thermal transitions of alkyl chain impurities (<em>trans</em> and saturated chains) in AuNW ligand shells can be used to regulate AuNW assembly at chemically patterned interfaces. </p> <p>Characterization of OLAm reagents by 1H NMR and mass spectrometry reveals significant and highly variable fractions elaidylamine (ELAm, <em>trans</em>-9-octadecen-1-amine) and octadecylamine (ODAm) between different batches of OLAm. To understand the phase behavior of mixtures of the C18 alkylamines commonly found in technical grade OLAm, we synthesize isomerically pure OLAm and its <em>trans</em> isomer, elaidylamine (ELAm), to generate binary and ternary mixtures with (ODAm), which is commercially available in high purity. Differential scanning calorimetry reveals limited miscibility of the C18 chains, and demonstrates the significant impact of chain composition on the physical properties of mixtures of alkyl chains (<em>e.g.,</em> tech. grade OLAm). Finally, we examine the impacts of <em>trans</em> and saturated alkyl chains on AuNW synthesis. We find that inclusion of ODAm and ELAm in the ligand blend used for AuNW synthesis each result in shorter AuNWs than those synthesized with pure OLAm. We also observe enhanced stability of surface adsorbed AuNWs conferred by <em>trans </em>and saturated chains. </p>

M. Tech. (Department of Biotechnology, Faculty of Applied and Computer Sciences) Vaal University of Technology. / Chemical precipitation method is the most widely used of all methods for preparing good quality semiconductor nanoparticles. Several conditions are optimized for producing the desired size and shape of particles. The parameters such as capping molecule, precursor concentration, time and temperature were investigated using the colloidal hot injection method. The effect of capping agent was the first parameter investigated in the synthesis of copper selenide, copper sulphide and copper oxide nanoparticles. The capping agents of interest in this study were oleylamine (OLA) and trioctylphosphine (TOP), due to their ability to act as reducing agents, surfactant, solvent and enhancement of colloidal stabilization. The use of oleylamine and trioctylphosphine were carried out at 220 °C for 30 minutes. The optical and structural properties of the yielded nanoparticles were characterize using UV/Vis spectroscopy, TEM and XRD and showed dependence on the type capping interactions from the two agents. Nanoparticles synthesized using TOP produced two phases whereas a single phase was observed from OLA as confirmed by XRD. OLA produced bigger particle sizes compared to TOP but with a wider variety of shapes. The wide variety of particle structures of OLA capped nanoparticles was advantageous since different types of bacteria were targeted in this work. Therefore, other synthetic parameters were investigated using OLA as both solvent and capping molecule. Precursor concentration ratio showed bigger effect in the size, and shape of the yielded nanoparticles. For copper selenide and copper sulphide (Cu: Se/ S), 1:1 concentration ratio gave the best optical and structural properties while copper oxide (CuO) nanoparticles demonstrated its best optical and structural properties in 2:1 ratio (Cu: O). Nonetheless, 1:1 precursor concentration ratio was used to optimise other parameters. Since reaction time has a profound effect on the nanocrystals size and shapes, the effect of reaction time in OLA was also investigated. The reaction time showed no effect on the phase composition of the synthesized copper sulphide, copper oxide and copper selenide nanoparticles. Reaction time of 30 minutes gave the best optical (the shape of the absorption band edge and emission maxima values) and structural (size distribution of particles) properties for CuSe and CuS compared to other reaction times (15 min, 45 and 60 min). 15 min reaction time gave the best optical and structural properties for copper oxide but nonetheless, 30 min was used as the optimum reaction time for further optimization. Temperature showed an effect in size, shape and the stoichiometry of the reaction. These effects were confirmed by the optical and structural properties of the synthesized nanoparticles. XRD patterns revealed some differences with the temperature change, indicating an effect on the phase composition of CuS and CuO but not on CuSe nanoparticles. CuSe and CuS nanoparticles synthesized at 220 °C gave the ideal optical and morphological features compared to other temperatures that were selected (160 ºC, 190 ºC and 240 ºC). Nonetheless, CuO revealed its best optical and structural properties at 160 ºC. 220 ºC was deduced to be the optimum temperature for the synthesis of these three materials under the synthetic conditions. The optimum parameter (220 ºC, 30 min and 1:1 ratio) were used to synthesize the three copper chalcogenides which were then tested against Gram-negative (E. coli and P. aeruginosa), Gram-positive (S. aureus and E. faecalis), and fungi (C. albicans). The plant species, Combretum molle and Acacia mearnsii were phytochemical screened for the presence of active organic compounds and the content of total phenols, flavonoids and antioxidants using different solvents. Both C. molle and A. mearnsii revealed the highest phenolic content in acetone extracts. C. molle revealed its highest flavonoid content in methanol extract and its highest free radical scavenging activity in acetone extract. Acetone extracts demonstrated the highest flavonoid content as well as the highest free radical scavenging activity of A. meansii. The solubility of copper chalcogenides and plant extract was tested in four different solvents and the solvent that demonstrated highest solubility was used for the coordination of the plant extract and copper chalcogenides. The plant extract coordinated nanoparticles were tested for their antibacterial and antifungal activity. Their results were compared to those of the active ingredient in their respective solvents from the medicinal plants as well as those of copper chalcogenides nanoparticles without plant extracts using diffusion disk and MICs methods. The synthesized nanoparticles showed better performance than plant extracts with copper oxide performing the best, followed by copper selenide and lastly by copper sulfide. The performance of plants extracts highly dependent on the solvent of extract with acetone showing the best performance for both C. molle and A. Mearnsii followed by ethanol. The addition of active ingredients from C. molle and A. mearnsii to the synthesized nanoparticles did not enhance the performance of these nanoparticles.

The aim of this study is to demonstrate the possibility of production of nanocables as an alternative to the other one dimensional metal/polymer composite structures like nanowires and nanorods. There is no certain definition of nanocables / however they could be considered as assemblies of nanowires. Nanocable structure can be defined as a core-shell structure formed by a polymeric shell and a metal core that runs continuously within this shell. To produce nanocables, two main steps were carried out. Firstly, monodispersed silver metal nanoparticles to be aligned within the cable core were produced. Investigations on reduction reactions in the presence of strong and weak reducing agents and different capping agents revealed the importance of the kinetics of reduction in the production of monodispersed nanoparticles. Use of capping agents to give a positive reduction potential, resulted in the slow reduction rates that was critical for fine tuning of the final particle sizes between 1-10 nm. Hydrazine hydrate and oleylamine/ oleic acid systems were used as strong and weak reducing agents, respectively. By using weak reducing agent, monodisperse spherical silver nanoparticles with the diameter of 2.7 nm were produced. It was shown that particles with controlled diameter and size distribution can be obtained by tuning the system parameters. Secondly, particles produced as such were electrospun within the core of the polymer nanofibers and long continuous nanocables were produced. Polyvinyl pyrrolidone and polycaprolactone were used in shell part of nanocables. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), photon correlation spectroscopy (PCS), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and surface plasmon resonance spectroscopy (SPR) analyses were carried out in order to understand the mechanism by which the nanoparticles were reduced and for further characterization of the product.

Tri(pyrazolyl)phosphane (5R1,R2) werden als alternative, kostengünstige und geringer toxische Phosphorpräkursoren in der Synthese von InP/ZnS Quantenpunkten (QP) eingesetzt. Ausgehend von diesen Vorläuferverbindungen konnten langzeitstabile (>6 Monate) P(OLA)3 (OLAH = Oleylamin) Stammlösungen synthetisiert werden, aus denen sich die entsprechenden Pyrazole einfach zurückgewinnen lassen. P(OLA)3 fungiert in der Synthese von hochemittierenden InP/ZnS QP sowohl als Phosphorquelle als auch als Reduktionsmittel. Die erhaltenen Kern/Schale-Partikel zeichnen sich durch hohe Photolumineszenz-Quantenausbeuten (PL-QA) von 51–62% in einem spektralen Bereich von 530–620 nm aus. Die Verarbeitung und Anwendung dieser InP/ZnS QP als Farbkonversionsschicht wurde als „proof-of-concept“ in einer weißen Leuchtdiode (LED) demonstriert

Tri(pyrazolyl)phosphanes (5R1,R2) are utilized as an alternative, cheap and low-toxic phosphorus source for the convenient synthesis of InP/ZnS quantum dots (QDs). From these precursors, remarkably long-term stable stock solutions (>6 months) of P(OLA)3 (OLAH = oleylamine) are generated from which the respective pyrazoles are conveniently recovered. P(OLA)3 acts simultaneously as phosphorus source and reducing agent in the synthesis of highly emitting InP/ZnS core/shell QDs. These QDs are characterized by a spectral range between 530–620 nm and photoluminescence quantum yields (PL QYs) between 51–62%. A proof-of-concept white light-emitting diode (LED) applying the InP/ZnS QDs as color conversion layer was built to demonstrate their applicability and processibility.