Mechanistic Insights into the Formation of Dodecanethiolate-Stabilized Magnetic Iridium Nanoparticles: Thiosulfate vs Thiol Ligands

The synthesis of stable and isolable iridium nanoparticles with an average core size of ∼1.2 ± 0.3 nm was achieved by employing sodium S-dodecylthiosulfate as a ligand precursor during the modified Brust–Schiffrin reaction. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) of the isolated Ir nanoparticles revealed a high degree of monodispersity. Further characterizations with 1H NMR, FT-IR, UV–vis spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) confirmed that the synthesized Ir nanoparticles are stabilized by dodecanethiolate ligands produced upon the adsorption/cleavage of S-dodecylthiosulfate on the growing Ir nanoparticle surface. By comparison, synthetic attempts employing dodecanethiol as a stabilizing ligand led to the formation of Ir-thiolate species (Ir(SR)3) as an intermediate and Ir-hydroxide species at the completion of reaction. Mechanistic investigations of these two reactions using S-dodecylthiosulfate and dodecanethiol provided deeper understandings on the novelty of thiosulfate ligands, which allow the successful formation of stable thiolate-capped Ir nanoparticles. Moreover, these Ir nanoparticles were shown to have strong magnetic properties.