Green synthesis and characterization of superparamagnetic nanocomposite based on reduced graphene oxide/Fe3O4 prepared using leaf extract of Azadirachta indica

Abstract

The present work focuses on the in-situ synthesis of Fe3O4/rGO magnetic nanocomposite by using leaf extract of Azadirachta indica as a reducing agent. Morphology and EDX studies indicate that the rGO array and Fe3O4 nanoparticles have effectively cooperated with each other. XRD analysis confirms a high crystallinity cubic structural phase with a crystallite size of about 7.48 nm. FTIR spectroscopy confirms the strong Fe-O stretching bonding. UV-Visible spectroscopy reveals the formation of rGO and iron oxide nanoparticles with the tunable energy bandgap of 2.52 eV, which is calculated using the Tauc plot. VSM analysis confirms the superparamagnetic nature of nanocomposite with approximate magnetization (Ms) 47.36 emu/g. The TGA study confirms the higher thermal stability of the synthesized nanocomposite as compared to rGO and Fe3O4 nanoparticles. It is expected that the synthesized Fe3O4/rGO nanocomposite, an eco-friendly and nontoxic material may be used in various advanced applications.