Surfactant-assisted low-temperature synthesis of monodispersed phase pure cubic CoO solid nanoparallelepipeds via thermal decomposition of cobalt(II) acetylacetonate

Abstract

Cubic CoO solid nanoparallelepipeds have been successfully synthesized via a low-temperature thermal decomposition of cobalt(II) acetylacetonate in the presence of a relatively inexpensive surfactant octadecylamine (C18H37NH2). Octadecylamine served both as reaction media and capping agent during the synthesis. The synthesized nanomaterial was characterized by powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), FT-IR and energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) studies. The XRD pattern furnished evidence for the face-centered cubic structure of CoO with average crystallite size of about 20nm. The TEM images showed the nanoparticles to be monodispersed, parallelepiped shaped of 10—20nm sizes. The electron diffraction pattern indicated polycrystalline nature of the synthesized material.