A Facile Chemical Synthesis of Silica Coated FeCo Nanocubes

FeCo nanostructures are of interest because of their high magnetization and low coercivity which are suitable for biomedical applications. However, particle morphologies are still difficult to control. In this work, the FeCo nanocubes have been prepared by a chemical reduction method using hydrazine as a reducing agent. Using only polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) as a capping agent without cyclohexane as previous works, the obtained particles are quite uniform in shape and air-stable, and can be facile coated with silica. Nevertheless, to obtain the uniform FeCo nanocubes, the concentration of sodium hydroxide used in the synthesis needs to be optimized. The obtained FeCo nanocubes exhibit a high saturation magnetization of 220.9 emu/g and low coercivities of around 180 Oe.