Investigating the Effect of Ultrasound Intensity on the Magnetic Properties of Magnetite Nanostructures Synthesized by Sonochemical Method

In this article, the synthesis of magnetite nanostructures was successfully carried out by the sonochemical process. In this method, stoichiometric amount of iron chlorides (FeCl3.6H2O and FeCl2.4H2O), ammonia (NH3) and polyvinylpyrolidone (PVP) were used to synthesize pure Fe3O4 nanoparticles. The effect of initial sonication power of the ultrasonic device on the size and morphology of the final products as one of the effective parameters was investigated. For this, the initial power of the sonicator was evaluated at 90, 70, 50 and 30 W at 40°C. Characterization of Fe3O4 nanoparticles was done by transmission electron microscope (TEM) and X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) and its magnetic properties were investigated by vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM). Investigation of the XRD pattern after annealing showed that pure Fe3O4 phase was successfully formed during the sonochemical process. TEM images determined the size of Fe3O4 nanoparticles to be 10-50 nm. The results showed that increasing the initial power of the system reduced the particle size and improved the magnetic properties of nanoparticles.