Triethanolamine Assisted Hydrothermal Synthesis of Superparamagnetic Co_3O_4 Nanoparticles and Their Characterizations

摘要

We present, for the first time, on a facile route for the fabrication of highly crystalline Co_3O_4 nanoparticles using trietanolamine (TEA) assisted hydrothermal synthesis route and single precursor. Synthesized material has been evaluated for its structural, morphological and magnetic properties using x-ray powder diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM) techniques. The material has been identified as highly crystalline Co_3O_4, with superparamagnetic character due to size confinement. Estimated particle size from SEM is about 10 nm, which is close to the magnetic domain size (estimated from VSM as 8.4 ± 1.7 nm) and the crystallite size (estimated from XRD as 11 pm 4 nm), which reveal nearly single crystalline character of Co_3O_4 nanoparticles. The suggested route is facile, which provides a good size control over the nanoparticles, and can be used for the fabrication of other ceramic materials.