Anisotropic growth of α-Fe2O3 nanostructures

In this work, we report on the anisotropic growth of α-Fe2O3 nanoslabs which are produced by co-precipitation method with the addition of sucrose. In our previous work, we have argued that such behavior can be related with the chelating agent. Experiments of X-ray diffraction (XRD), high-resolution transmission electronic microscopy (HRTEM) and magnetic measurements as a function of temperature and an applied magnetic field are used to characterize the samples. The HRTEM image of the sample prepared with 10 mmol/l of sucrose consists of faceted-like nanoslabs while that prepared without sucrose exhibits particles with a non-uniform shape. In this way, we can state that both the HRTEM images and the analysis of the XRD patterns show clearly a preferential growth of the [110] crystallographic direction. To strengthen our supposition, besides T- and field-dependence of magnetization are consistent with a superparamagnetic behavior the fit of the (Zero Field Cooling and Field Cooling) ZFC-FC curve for sample grown with 10 mmol/l of sucrose presents a strong increase of the effective anisotropy constant, Keff, which can be related with the increasing of the shape magnetic anisotropy.