Facile preparation of nanostructured ruthenium phosphides from white phosphorus

Metal phosphides have attracted considerable attention due to their unique chemical and physical properties. Applications as catalytic, magnetic, electrode and hard materials have been discovered.1 For the first time, ruthenium phosphide nanoparticles were prepared by a wet route using white phosphorus as "P" source. This procedure allows milder reaction conditions and a fine tuning of the ratio Ru:P, achieving Ru2P, RuP and RuP2 as highly pure and crystalline nanostructured materials (Figure 1). TEM measurements reveal that the nanostructured colloids are highly monodisperse, with very small average particle size. Their catalytic activity was evaluated in the hydrogenation of phenylacetylene and a dramatic change of the catalytic efficiency was observed on going from Ru2P to RuP2 stoichiometries. Acknowledgments: the authors thank the European Union (Marie Curie ITN SusPhos, Grant Agreement No. 317404) for financing a doctoral grant to F.D.C. and the ERC for funding the project PHOSFUN "Phosphorene functionalization: a new platform for advanced multifunctional materials" (Grant Agreement No. 670173) through an ERC Advanced Grant to MP. 1. S. Carenco, D. Portehault, C. Boissière, N. Mézailles, C. Sanchez, Chem. Rev. 2013, 113, 7981.