These past weeks I’ve spent most of my time perfecting the arts of synthesizing Iron Oxide (Fe3O4) nanoparticles, by now I already know the whole process by heart and we have established a few twitches to make the process more consistent.
After the synthesis is done we use a magnet to pull the nanoparticles to the bottom of the flask in order to remove the residual water from the reaction. The Iron Oxide (Fe3O4) has strong paramagnetic properties, making the nanoparticles easy to manipulate and remove with the use of magnets. After removing the residue, we use DI water to wash away any excess remainging and leave them for 10 minutes in a sonic bath to make the nanoparticles disperse as much as possible; We repeat this process 3 times with DI water and 2 times with ethanol.
We discovered that the volume of water, temperature, and time left during the coprecipitation process have an effect on the magnetic properties and how well the nanoparticles disperse after the reaction is done. We’ll be conducting tests to see how much of an effect these have and if there’s anything we can do to improve the synthesis.
