Stabilization of bismuth ferrite suspensions in aqueous medium with sodium polyacrylate characterized by different molecular weights

• Electrostatic stabilization of bismuth ferrite BiFeO3 suspensions in aqueous medium.
• Use of polyacrylate as dispersant agent characterized by different Mw.
• Influence of BFO conc, dispersant agent conc and Mw, and sonication time.
• Dispersion efficiency in terms of sediment percentage and the zeta potential trend.
• Spectrophotometric method to investigate the sediment percentage.

Electrostatic stabilization of bismuth ferrite BiFeO3 (BFO) single phase micronized particles suspended for the first time in aqueous medium, using sodium polyacrylate (Na-PAA) as suspending agent, was investigated to form homogeneous films through electrophoretic deposition technique. The dispersion efficiency was evaluated in terms of the zeta potential trend as a function of pH and sediment percentage, employing a fast and easy spectrophotometric method. All the tests were performed using three suspending agents characterized by the same polyacrylate functional group (-COONa) but with different molecular weights (Na-PAA Mw = 2100, 5100, and 20 000). The effect of BFO particles concentration (wt%), suspending agent concentration (wt%), suspending agent molecular weight and sonication time have been evaluated. The results showed that for all the experiments carried out the electrostatic stabilization of the BFO micronized particles in aqueous medium is accomplished in high basic pH range (8.5–9 or 9–11) depending on the molecular weight of the polyacrylate additive.

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