Theoretical and experimental analysis of the aerosol assisted CVD synthesis of magnetite hollow nanoparticles

Nowadays, mesoporous magnetite nanoparticles are an important class of new nanomaterials which occupy a valuable position in materials science. Owing to their several advantages over bulk magnetite and particularly with respect to higher adsorption capacity, there is a growing interest towards the use of these materials for the adsorptive removal of a variety of contaminants, including organic dyes from wastewater. Through aerosol assisted chemical vapor deposition (AACVD) technique is possible to synthesize spherical hollow nanoparticles with external diameter from 50 to 500 nm, composed of a shell of crystallites smaller than 30 nm. In the AACVD method, the structural morphology of resultant nanoparticles strongly depends on the starting precursors and operating conditions. Some advantages of this technique are the high production rate, continuous operation, use of relatively simple equipment, easy doping and the possibility to scale the process industrially. Therefore, in order to understand the formation of magnetite nanoparticles by AACVD, theoretical simulations were performed on two important steps of the synthesis: (i) temperature and carrier gas flow distribution inside of tubular reactor, and (ii) the distribution of molar concentration of the precursor in the synthesis process. Reaction kinetics of the precursor was studied to determine Arrhenius parameters. Activation energy and pre-exponential factor were calculated experimentally from thermal analysis, these values were used in the calculation of reactants and product concentration distribution inside of the tubular reactor. Results from the simulation were compared with those obtained from the experiments.