Fabrication of size controllable YVO 4 nanoparticles via microemulsion-mediated synthetic process

Abstract

Narrow size distributed YVO 4 nanoparticles with controllable size were successfully fabricated by direct reaction of Na 3VO 4 and Y(NO 3) 3 in CTAB microemulsion systems. By the confinement of the microemulsion droplets, with manipulating the pH value of microemulsion media to 7, 8, 9, 10, the size of YVO 4 nanoparticles can be accurately controlled as 8.9, 11.1, 13.9 and 47.2 nm, respectively. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscope (TEM) were utilized to characterize the structure, size and shape of the nanoparticles, which indicated tetragonal phase YVO 4 nanoparticles displaying ellipsoidal or lozenge-like shape. As pH value is an important factor in our experiments and W value ( W=[H 2O]/[CTAB]) is the key parameter in the formation of microemulsion droplets, their influences on the YVO 4 nanoparticles formation were studied.