ORIGINAL PAPER Single-Source Molecular Precursor for Synthesis of Copper Sulfide Nanostructures Azam Sobhani • Masoud Salavati-Niasari • S. Mostafa Hosseinpour-Mashkani Received: 6 March 2012 / Published online: 12 September 2012 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012 Abstract As a new precursor, [bis(thiosemicarbazide)copper(II)]chloride; ([Cu (TSC) 2 ]Cl 2 ), complex was used in thermal decomposition process for the synthesis of Cu 2 S nanocrystals. The steric hindrance of the precursor raises the need of using co-surfactant, therefore oleylamine (C 18 H 37 N) and triphenylphosphine (C 18 H 15 P) were applied as solvent and surfactant of the reaction. CuS nanocrystals were synthesized via hydrothermal decomposition of [bis(thiosemicarbazide) copper(II)] without any surfactant. The products were characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and photoluminescence spectroscopy. Synthesized copper sulfide nanostructures have average size of 20–50 nm. Finally, optical properties of the products were examined and investigated by PL spectra. Keywords Nanostructures  Thermal decomposition  Cu 2 S  Hydrothermal  Thiosemicarbazide  Surfactant A. Sobhani  M. Salavati-Niasari (&) Department of Inorganic Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Kashan, P.O. Box 87317–51167, Kashan, Islamic Republic of Iran e-mail: salavati@kashanu.ac.ir M. Salavati-Niasari Institute of Nano Science and Nano Technology, University of Kashan, P.O. Box 87317–51167, Kashan, Islamic Republic of Iran S. M. Hosseinpour-Mashkani Center for Nanoscience and Technology, IST, Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad 500 085, Andhra Pradesh, India 123 J Clust Sci (2012) 23:1143–1151 DOI 10.1007/s10876-012-0509-4