Chemically synthesized nanoparticles of iron and iron-carbides

Hafsa Khurshid; Yassir A Abdu; Eamonn Devlin; Bashar Afif Issa; George C Hadjipanayis

doi:10.1039/d0ra02996c

Chemically synthesized nanoparticles of iron and iron-carbides

RSC Adv. 2020 Aug 5;10(48):28958-28964. doi: 10.1039/d0ra02996c. eCollection 2020 Aug 3.

Authors

Hafsa Khurshid^{1

2

3}, Yassir A Abdu¹, Eamonn Devlin⁴, Bashar Afif Issa^{2

5}, George C Hadjipanayis⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Applied Physics and Astronomy, University of Sharjah Sharjah UAE hkhurshid@sharjah.ac.ae.
² Research Institute for Medical and Health Sciences (RIMHS), University of Sharjah Sharjah UAE.
³ Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, Department of Radiology Lebanon NH USA.
⁴ National Center for Scientific Research, Demokritos Greece.
⁵ Department of Medical Diagnostic Imaging, University of Sharjah Sharjah UAE.
⁶ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware Delaware USA.

Abstract

In this paper, we report a one-pot chemical synthesis technique for the preparation of iron and iron-carbide nanoparticles. Mössbauer spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and magnetometry were used as the main tools to identify the different phases of Fe-C present. The influence of experimental parameters on the structural and compositional properties of nanoparticles was investigated in detail. These particles show ferromagnetic behavior with room temperature coercivity higher than 300 Oe. The X-ray diffraction was complemented by Mössbauer spectroscopy and thermo-magnetic analysis. Remarkably, the carbon content in iron-carbide nanoparticles (carbon rich or carbon poor iron-carbides) can be modulated simply by varying the experimental conditions, like the reaction time, temperature and iron precursor concentration. Magnetic properties can be tailored based upon crystallographic structure and particles composition.