Investigation of the effect of the molar ratio of reagents on the dimensional and structural characteristics of cobalt hexacyanoferrate nanoparticles

Abstract

In this work the influence of the molar ratio on the dimensional and structural characteristics of cobalt hexacyanoferrate nanoparticles was studied. The synthesis was carried out by chemical method in an aqueous medium using potassium hexacyanoferrate and cobalt nitrate. As a result of the study of samples by the method of dynamic light scattering, the values of the hydrodynamic radius of the samples were obtained. It was found that the minimum size (R = 76 nm) has a sample with a molar ratio K3[Fe(CN)6] : Co(NO3)2= 4 : 1. Scanning electron microscopy revealed that cobalt hexacyanoferrate samples are irregularly shaped aggregates consisting of nanoparticles with a diameter of 50 to 150 nm. As a result of X-ray phase analysis, it was found that the samples have a face-centered cubic crystal structure (Fm 3 m). According to the Debye-Scherrer equation, the average size of crystallites in the samples is from 17 to 20 nm.

Keywords

• transition metal hexacyanoferrates
• cobalt hexacyanoferrate
• cobalt nitrate
• scanning electron microscopy
• dynamic light scattering
• powder diffractometry
• hydrodynamic radius