Superparamagnetic characteristic of surface capped Mg0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4 nanoparticles reinforced polycarbonate nanocomposite fibers with mixed magnetic phases

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to prepare magnetic polycarbonate nanocomposite fibers from nonmagnetic polycarbonate material by electrospinning method. This was achieved by the incorporation of oleic acid capped magnesium zinc ferrite (Mg0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4) nanoparticles during the spinning process. The presence of uniformly distributed surface capped Mg0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4 nanoparticles in the polymer nanofibers was detected by TEM investigation. The nanocomposite fibers retained and exhibited the excellent surface morphology as that of the plane polycarbonate fibers prepared under the same solution and spinning parameters. FT-IR and XRD studies revealed that, there did not happen any degradation to the polycarbonate material even with a high nanofiller load or under a high applied potential during electrospinning. UV-Visible spectral study shows that the polycarbonate nanocomposite fibers attained attractive visible light absorption power. The increased polymer entanglement by the proper interaction with the ferrite nanoparticles attributes to the increase in the glass transition temperature of the nanocomposite fibers. The VSM analysis was carried out to find the magnetic parameters like saturation magnetization, coercivity and retentivity of the composite fibers. Mossbauer spectral analysis was done to know the isomer shift, quadrupole splitting and the average hyperfine field. PC-Mg0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4 composite nanofibers exhibit quadrupole splitting values between 0.35 and 0.57 mm/s