Study of Iron oxide nanoparticles using Mössbauer spectroscopy with a high velocity resolution

• The high velocity resolution Mössbauer spectra of Iron oxide nanoparticles.
• Complicated nanoparticles’ architecture.
• The effect of polar molecules and nanoparticle coating.

Iron oxide (magnetite and maghemite) nanoparticles developed for magnetic fluids were studied using Mössbauer spectroscopy with a high velocity resolution at 295 and 90 K. The recorded Mössbauer spectra have demonstrated that usual physical models based on octahedral and tetrahedral sites were not suitable for fitting. Alternatively, the Mössbauer spectra were nicely fitted using a large number of magnetic sextets. The obtained results showed that the Mössbauer spectra and the assessed parameters were different for nanoparticles as-prepared and dispersed in the dispersing fluid at 295 K. We claim that this finding is mainly due to the interaction of polar molecules with Iron cations at nanoparticle’s surface or due to the surface coating using carboxylic-terminated molecules. It is assumed that the large number of spectral components may be related to complexity of the nanoparticle’s characteristics and deviations from stoichiometry, including in the latter the influence of the oxidation of magnetite towards maghemite.

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