Phase investigation of as-prepared iron oxide/hydroxide produced by sol-gel synthesis

In this work, a xerogel nanostructure was prepared by a sol-gel method. Fe(NO3)3·9H2O was used as precursor, ethanol as solvent and propylene oxide as gelation agent. Fourier transform infrared, X-ray diffraction and Mössbauer spectroscopies were used to characterize the as-prepared xerogel phases. The combined results of these techniques indicate the presence of hematite (α-Fe2O3) and goethite (α-FeO(OH)) in the inorganic polymer. Although the first two techniques supported the presence of an iron hydroxide phase (Fe(OH)3), no Mössbauer parameters were found in the literature to confirm it.