Iron oxide magnetic nanoparticles synthesized by atmospheric microplasmas

This paper presents the synthesis of iron oxide nanoparticles using the atmospheric microplasma (AMP). The properties of iron oxide nanoparticles synthesized using AMP are compared with particles (i) formed in as-prepared solution and (ii) prepared using thermal decomposition method. Iron oxide nanoparticles prepared by all the 3 treatment methods exhibit quite soft ferromagnetic properties with coercivities less than 10 G. The AMP synthesis technique was found to be more efficient and better than thermal decomposition method due to ultra-shorter experiment time (around 2.5 min) as compared to 90 min required for thermal decomposition method. Moreover, AMP synthesized nanoparticles are better isolated and of smaller size than thermal decomposition ones. The effect of plasma discharge timings on synthesized nanoparticles has also been studied in this work. Coercivity of synthesized nanoparticles decreases with the increasing plasma discharge timings from 3 to 10 min. The nanoparticles synthesized using plasma discharge timing of 10 min exhibit the smallest coercivity of around 3 G. This suggests a high possibility of achieving super-paramagnetic nanoparticles by optimizing the plasma discharge timings of AMP.