Study of Magnetite Nanoparticles by the Method of Mössbauer Spectroscopy

Abstract

In this work, we studied the Mössbauer spectra of magnetite samples of various compositions. To protect magnetite from oxidation, the resulting particles are coated with protective shells, among which silanes are promising, which polymerize on the surface of magnetite nanoparticles, forming strong covalent bonds. The coating of nanoparticles protects them from aggressive environmental influences, evens out their size distribution, and also protects the environment from the possible toxic effects of the particles themselves. It was shown that the magnetite phase predominates in the sample of native particles, the coating of native particles with alkoxysilane does not lead to fundamental changes in the phase state of the sample particles, and oxidation with nitric acid leads to the complete transformation of magnetite into maghemite. It is obvious that the reason for the distortions of the relaxation nature in the Mössbauer spectra of the samples is the small sizes of the iron-containing domains, which allows us to consider the description of the spectra within the framework of the model of multilevel superparamagnetic relaxation.