Facile one-step synthesis of palladium tellurium alloy nanorods

A palladium-tellurium binary alloy nanomaterial was synthesized by a one-pot reaction of bis(4-methoxyphenyltelluro)methane [(4-CH3O-C6H4Te)2CH2](1) and allylpalladium (II)chloride dimer [(η3-C3H5)2Pd2(μ-Cl2)] (2) in 1:1 ratio using methylene chloride as solvent at ambient conditions. In addition to the Pd20Te7 alloy nanomaterial (3) generated, a palliadum (II) tellurolate complex [PdC1(μ-TeC6H4-OCH3)Te(C6H4-OCH3)2]2 (6), and other organic and organotellurim compounds were isolated as byproducts using column chromatography. The palladium-tellurium binary alloy nanomaterial and other byproducts from the reaction were characterized by powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), NMR, GC-MS, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and single crystal X-ray diffractions (XRD) methods. The palladium-tellurium binary alloy nanomaterial was obtained as single-phase Pd20Te7 nanorods, under mild conditions. TEM results indicated that the nanorods are less than 15 nm in diameter and range from 40 to 200 nm in length. A nanomaterial mixture was isolated with two binary-phases Pd20Te7 and Pd10Te3 when benzene was used as solvent. Compound 6 was successfully tested for catalytic activity for the Heck Reaction and produced a mixture of PdTe2 with Pd13Te3 nanomaterials as byproducts.