A novel decoupling reduction-sulfurization process for the synthesis of inorganic fullerene-like (IF) WS2 nanoparticles has been developed in this work. In this strategy, the raw WO3 nanoparticles are firstly reduced by hydrogen in a fluidized bed, followed by sulfurization with H2S in a reducing atmosphere. The diffusion and reaction are the two kinetic factors playing important roles in controlling the structure of WS2. Under diffusion limitation, the porous beta-W phase and inordinate WS2 structure are formed, while the alpha-W phase and IF-WS2 structure are usually obtained in the reaction-limited condition. The particulate fluidization of the reduced WO3 nanoparticles in the agglomerates forms is realized in this decoupiing reduction sulfurization process. The porous beta-W nanoparticles and their particulate fluidization enhance the diffusion of H2S, resulting in the completion of sulfurization reaction in short time. This newly developed approach is efficient and cost-effective, and might be extended to the large-scale synthesis of other inorganic fullerene-like metal sulfides. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.