Novel Xanthate Complexes for the Size-Controlled Synthesis of Copper Sulfide Nanorods

We present a simple, easily scalable route to monodisperse copper sulfide nanocrystals by the hot injection of a series of novel copper(I) xanthate single-source precursors [(PPh₃)₂Cu(S₂COR)] (R = isobutyl, 2-methoxyethyl, 2-ethoxyethyl, 1-methoxy-2-propyl, 3-methoxy-1-butyl, and 3-methoxy-3-methyl-1-butyl), whose crystal structures are also reported. We show that the width of the obtained rods is dependent on the length of the xanthate chain, which we rationalize through a computational study, where we show that there is a relationship between the ground-state energy of the precursor and the copper sulfide rod width.