Sonochemical Synthesis and Characterization of a Nano-Sized Lead (II) Coordination Polymer; A New Precursor for the Preparation of PbO Nanoparticles

Development of components that can form large molecular aggregates through non–covalent interactions, in nano size structures, has been an active area of research. In current study, a nano-sized Pb(II) coordination polymer, {[Pb(pydc)(pydc.H2)(H2O)2]2}n (1), where [pydc.H2= 2,6-pyridinedicarboxylic acid), were synthesized by sonochemical method and characterized by field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), FT-IR spectroscopy and elemental analyses. The sizes of the nano-structures were approximately 90 nm. The thermal stability of compound 1 has been studied by thermal gravimetric (TG) and differential thermal analyses (DTA). The crystal structure of compound 1, based on an X-ray structural analysis has been reported before, in which the crystal dimensions was in millimeter range. Pure phase PbO nanoparticles were simply obtained by calcination of nano-sized compound 1 at 600 °C under argon atmosphere and the particles size of the PbO were about 26 nm. This study demonstrates that the coordination polymers may be suitable precursors for the simple one-pot preparation of nanoscale metal oxide materials with different and interesting morphologies.