Journal of Inorganic Materials

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γ-Fe2O3/SiO2 Nanocomposites Obtained by Sol-Gel Synthesis

HUANG Xiang-Hui; CHEN Zhen-Hua   

  1. Material Science and Technology Department; Hunan University; Changsha 410082; China
  • Received:2004-03-29 Revised:2004-06-15 Published:2005-05-20 Online:2005-05-20

Abstract: Nanocomposites with γ-Fe2O3 nanoparticles uniformly dispersed in silica matrix were successfully synthesized by using tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS) as silica precursor and iron nitrate as ferric oxide precursor. However, when iron chloride was used as precursor, hematite was obtained in the final composite. It was found that the dried gels obtained at low temperatures (T < 400℃) were amorphous, when the dried gels were heat treated at 600℃, a lot of γ-Fe2O3 nanoparticles were formed, while a further increase of temperature resulted in γ to α-Fe2O3 transformation. The addition of acids to the sols resulted in a way to increase particle size and to narrow the particle size distribution of γ-Fe2O3 in the composite.

Key words: γ-Fe2O3/SiO2, nanocomposites, sol-gel method

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