Structural, photometric and magnetic characterization of Co-precipitated maghemite nanoparticles

Iron oxides have myriad applications in domains such as pigmentation, targeted-drug delivery, gassensing, magnetic storage, catalysis, opto-electronics and more. Herein, we report an experimental endeavour to co-precipitate gamma- Fe2O3 nanoparticles at varying degrees of alkalinity and ambient temperature, as well as to perform characterization scrutiny to correlate its structural, photometric, and magnetization property. The diffraction patterns conform it to be maghemite nanoparticles, and particulate size has been estimated at 5.5-11.1 nm. The forbidden energy gap has been observed to vary from 1.8 eV to 3.2 eV as the particle size decreases. The magnetization measurements reveal the superparamagnetic nature of the sample at room temperature. (C) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.