Preparation and characterization of monoclinic sulfur nanoparticles by water-in-oil microemulsions technique

Nanosized monoclinic sulfur particles have been successfully prepared via the chemical reaction between sodium polysulfide and hydrochloric acid in a reverse microemulsions system, with theolin, butanol, and a mixture of Span80 and Tween80 (weight ratio 8 : 1) as the oil phase, co-surfactant and surfactant, respectively. Transparent microemulsions were obtained by mixing the oil phase, surfactant, co-surfactant, and the aqueous phase in appropriate proportion using an emulsification machine at the room temperature. The resulting sulfur nanoparticles were characterized by dynamic light scattering (DLS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), infrared spectroscopy (IR) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM).