Sonochemical Synthesis of Cadmium(II) Coordination Polymer Nanospheres as Precursor for Cadmium Oxide Nanoparticles

Abstract

Nanospheres of a new coordination polymer {[Cd2(µ-HL)(µ-L)(NO3)3(H2O)]·H2O}n (1) were easily prepared by a sonochemical method from cadmium(II) nitrate and HL (HL, pyridine-2-carboxaldehyde isonicotinoyl hydrazone) in ethanol. Single crystals of 1 were also obtained using a branched tube method. The crystal structure of 1 indicates that the µ-HL/µ-L− blocks act as linkers between the Cd(II) centers, assembling them into 1D tooth-shaped interdigitated chains, which are further interlinked into a complex 3D H-bonded network with a rare hms (3,5-conn) topology. Nanoparticles of 1 were characterized by elemental analysis, FT-IR spectroscopy, and powder X-ray diffraction (XPRD), while their spherical morphology was confirmed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Furthermore, in the presence of a surfactant, the thermolysis of sonochemically generated nanoparticles of 1 led to the formation of cadmium oxide nanospheres (cubic CdO) with an average diameter of 10 nm. This study extends the application of sonochemical synthetic methods for the generation of phase pure nanoparticles of coordination polymers and their thermolysis products.

Keywords

• sonochemical synthesis
• coordination polymers
• metal-organic frameworks
• crystal structure
• crystal engineering
• cadmium
• nanoparticles