Zinc sulfide nanocoating of silica submicron spheres using a single-source method.

A chemical method to coat submicron silica particles with nanocrystalline zinc sulfide is described. The ZnS nanocoating was obtained by the thermalysis of zinc diethyldithiocarbamate in the presence of morphologically well defined silica particles. The powders obtained were isolated and were characterized by UV/visible optical reflectance, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The results showed that the silica surfaces became homogeneously coated with ZnS as the reaction time was increased. This coating consists in clusters of small ZnS particles whose dimensions are within the nanometric range.