E1 reaction-induced synthesis of hydrophilic oxide nanoparticles in non-hydrophilic solvent

DOI: 10.1039/C2NR32255B

DOI: 10.1039/C2NR32255B
Received 12 Aug 2012, Accepted 03 Sep 2012
First published on the web 06 Sep 2012

Abstract

In this paper, tert-amyl alcohol was employed to directly react with metal chlorides to prepare oxide nanoparticles. Some typical metal oxide or hydroxides with different morphologies, such as TiO2 nanoparticles, TiO2 nanorods, FeOOH nanowires, Fe2O3 nanoparticles, SnO2 nanoparticles, can be easily fabricated through such some simple chemical reactions. E1 reaction was found to play the leading role in the synthesis of metal oxides attributed to better stability of tertiary carbocations in tert-amyl alcohol and the strong interaction of metal chlorides with hydroxyl groups that result in the easy dissociation of carbon-oxygen bonds in tert-amyl alcohol. SN1 reaction can also happen in certain reactions due to nucleophilic substitution of chloride ions for hydroxyl groups. As-prepared metal oxides show good compatibility with aqueous system while they were synthesized in non-hydrophilic solvent probably attributed to specific E1 reaction mechanism involving the generation of water, and can be directly incorporated into aqueous soluble polymer, such as PVA, to exhibit many promising applications.