Preparation And Characterizations Of Amorphous Iron Oxide Nanoparticles

Amorphous metal oxide has huge potential in various applications, such as solar energy transformation, electronics, electrochemistry, manufacture of magnetic storage media, sorption and catalysis. In these applications, amorphous iron oxide particles play a key role, especially because of its superior catalytic activity, superparamagnetic behavior, and the large specific surface area of the nanoparticles. Previous work has found that the humidity sensing property of amorphous iron oxide is better than crystalline iron oxide, amorphous iron oxide used in a lithium intercalation cathode improves its properties, including high electrochemical performance and slow capacity fading and the nanocomposites of amorphous ferric oxide with SiO2 have attractive properties, including soft magnetic behavior, low density, and electric resistivity. It’s has been reported that the properties of the amorphous iron oxide have a close relationship with the morphology and the particle sizes. So it’s necessary to control the morphology and the particle sizes of the amorphous iron oxide.In this thesis, thermal decomposition was used to prepare amorphous iron oxide nanoparticles with well dispersion and small particle sizes.Firstly, the precursor Prussian blue (PB) was synthesized by UV-light irritation method. The morphology and the particle sizes are strictly controlled over by irradiation method and the solution concentration which affect the nucleation rate and the reaction rate. Prussian blue nanocubes were obtained by irritating the solution with light source located outside the beaker. Prussian blue nanospheres were synthesized by irritating the solution poured into the petri dish with light source paralleling the surface of the solution, and the average particle size is about 15 nm when the solution concentration is 1 mmol/L.Secondly, the well dispersed amorphous iron oxide nanoparticles were obtained by heating the Prussian blue with average particle size of about 15 nm and the average particle size is about 6 nm. It can be concluded from the results of FT-IR and TG-DTA that there are about 0.2% impurities such as C/N elements in the product.