One-pot synthesis of magnetic iron phosphide nanoparticles

A novel one-pot synthetic method to produce crystalline tri-octylphosphine (TOP) capped iron phosphide nanoparticles is reported here. Standard method of synthesizing FeP includes preparation of a precursor, sodium phosphide, which is finally reacted with ferric chloride (FeCl3).The methods for synthesizing iron phosphide (FeP), reported so far, rely on the use of toxic red or yellow phosphorus to generate the precursor, Sodium phosphide (Na3P). In present investigation, instead of red or yellow phosphorus, a relatively less toxic substance TOP and sodium metal (Na) have been used to yield Na3P. The synthesized nanoparticles were fully characterized by X-ray diffraction pattern (XRD), Infrared spectroscopy (IR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) analyses. The results showed that the synthesized FeP nanoparticles have the characteristic orthorhombic crystal structures, with the size similar to 10 nm and the coercivity 70 Oe at RT.