Structural and Functional Group Characterization of Nanocomposite Fe3O4/TiO2

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Mechanics, Materials Science & Engineering, April 2017 – ISSN 2412-5954

Structural and Functional Group Characterization of Nanocomposite Fe3O4/TiO2 and Its Magnetic Property40 V. Maria Vinosel1,a, M. Asisi Janifer1, S. Anand1, S. Pauline1 1 – Department of Physics, Loyola College, University of Madras, Chennai, India a – vinovincent90@gmail.com DOI 10.2412/mmse.36.92.83 provided by Seo4U.link

Keywords: Fe3O4, TiO2,XRD, SEM, FTIR, VSM.

ABSTRACT. Nanocomposites of Fe3O4/TiO2 were prepared by non-thermal method in the ratio 1:4. In this method magnetite and TiO2 anatase nanoparticles were prepared individually by hydrothermal and sol-gel respectively. X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD) of the sample reveals that the peaks can be indexed either to Fe3O4 or TiO2. The morphology and phase composition were characterized by High resolution scanning electron microscope (HRSEM) and Energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDAX). The Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra reveal information about metal oxygen in the composite. The magnetic properties of the sample were determined by Vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM).

Introduction. Titanium dioxide (TiO2) has much attention due to its applications in environmental purification like detoxification of wastewater, luminescent material, solar cells, gas sensors and medical fields. Titanium dioxide is an n-type semiconductor with a wide energy band gap exhibiting photocatalytic activity. This ceramic material has three different structures: rutile, anatase and brookite. Since the energy band gap (3.23 eV) of the anatase phase is wider than that of rutile (3.02 eV) the anatase phase is known to exhibit better photocatalytic behavior [1]. In such semiconductors, photogenerated carriers (electrons and holes) can tunnel to a reaction medium and participate in chemical reactions. The efficiency of photocatalyst is enhanced by the wider separation of an electrons and holes. Titanium dioxide is extensively used in the fabrication of core-shell systems as a photocatalytic agent because of its exceptional properties such as strong oxidation reaction, large effective surface area and low toxicity [2]. Fe3O4 is a magnetic material with wide applications in many areas such as gas sensors, optoelectronic and spintronic devices, biomedicine, etc. Fe3O4 is a kind of functional material and has attractive physical properties such as half-metallic character and strong spin polarization at room temperature. Its magnetic properties can be tuned by size, shape and dimension [3]. The researcher has been investigating on the design of magnetic core TiO2 shell structure for many applications. They have developed several ways to improve the activity of photocatalysts, such as carbon-doped TiO2, carboncoated TiO2, carbon–nanotube–TiO2 and graphene–TiO2 nanocomposites among these graphene TiO2 nanocomposites showed fantastic activity [4]. Fe3O4-TiO2 core–shell nanoparticles were prepared by a homogeneous method. They found, that Fe3O4-TiO2 core–shell nanostructure has higher photocatalytic activity in contrast to TiO2 nanoparticles and plays a crucial role in the field of malignant tumor therapy was reported by He et al [5]. Even though TiO2 has many advantages, there are some basic challenges in the applications of titanium dioxide nanoparticles 1) collecting and retrieving titania nanoparticles from reaction media is impossible, therefore, the nanoparticles used are not accessible anymore and their recycling is not possible 2) recombination of electrons and holes 40

© 2017 The Authors. Published by Magnolithe GmbH. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

MMSE Journal. Open Access www.mmse.xyz 161


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