Local structure and water cleaning ability of iron oxide nanoparticles prepared by hydro-thermal reaction

Abstract

Nanoparticles (NPs) of Fe₃O₄ and γFe₂O₃ synthesized by hydrothermal reaction were characterized by X-ray diffractometry (XRD), ⁵⁷Fe-Mössbauer spectroscopy and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM). A decrease in concentration of methylene blue (MB) aqueous solution due to bulk Fe⁰-NP γFe₂O₃ mixture with the mass ratio of 3:7 was measured by ultraviolet-visible light absorption spectroscopy (UV-Vis). The Mössbauer spectrum of NP Fe₃O₄ prepared from hydrothermal reaction was composed of two sextets with absorption area (A), isomer shift (δ) and internal magnetic field (H _int) of 56.3 %, 0.34_±0.03 mm s^− 1 and 49.0_±0.30 T for tetrahedral (T _d) Fe^III, and 43.7 %, 0.66_±0.11 mm s^− 1 and 44.0_±0.71 T for octahedral (O _h) Fe^II + III. The Fe^II/Fe^III ratio was determined to be 0.280 for NP Fe₃O₄, giving ‘x’ of 0.124 in Fe_3 − xO_4. These results show that NP Fe₃O₄ prepared by hydrothermal reaction was not regular but nonstoichiometric Fe₃O₄. Consistent results were observed for XRD patterns of NP Fe_3 − xO₄ indicating sharp intense peaks at 2Θ of 30.2, 35.7 and 43.3° with a large linewidth of 0.44°, yielding the crystallite size of 29–37 nm from the Scherrer’s equation. Iso-thermal annealing of NP Fe_3 − xO₄ at 250 °C for 30 min resulted in the precipitation of NP γFe₂O₃ with δ of 0.33_±0.03 mm s^− 1 and H _intof 46.4_±0.27 T due to magnetic tetrahedral Fe^III. The Debye temperature of NP Fe_3 − xO₄ was respectively estimated to be 267_±5.45 K for Fe$^{\mathrm{III}}(T_{\mathrm{d}})$ and 282_±7.17 K for Fe$^{\mathrm{II+III}}(O_{\mathrm{h}})$, both of which were smaller than that obtained for bulk Fe₃O₄ of 280_±4.15 K and 307_±5.70 K, indicating that the chemical environment of iron of NPs is less rigid than that of the bulk compounds. A leaching test using methylene blue (MB) and mixture of bulk Fe⁰-NP γFe₂O₃ (3:7) showed a remarkable decrease in MB concentration from 1.90 × 10^− 2 to 9.49 × 10^− 4 mM for 24 h with the first order rate constant (k _MB) of 2.1 × 10^− 3 min^− 1. This result verifies that MB decomposing ability is enhanced by using NP γFe₂O₃ compared with the k _MB of 1.1 × 10^− 4 min^− 1 previously obtained from the leaching test using MB and bulk mixture of Fe⁰ − γFe₂O₃ (3:7).