Synthesis of Iron Nanoclusters by Pulsed Current Method

Abstract

The main objective of this research is to prepare iron nanoclusters with more porous structure by the pulsed current electrochemical method. In this method, there are some effective parameters including; pulse amplitude (current amount), pulse frequency, iron salt concentration, sulfuric acid concentration and synthesis temperature, which were optimized by the “one at a time method”. An iron optimized nanopowder was synthesized by using iron sulfate (0.005 M) as precursor and silver nitrate as a nucleation agent (at 0.5% mole of iron sulfate in the starting solution) by pulsed current of 20 mA cm−2 with a frequency of 14 Hz. The relative gravimetrical density was used as an optimizing parameter for iron nanoparticles synthesis. The morphology and particle size of each synthesized sample was studied by SEM, TEM and XRD. The iron nanopowder synthesized in the optimum conditions has excellent uniform and a more porous structure including nanoclusters with a particle size of approximately 20–40 nm. The obtained results indicate that the pulsed current electrochemical method can be used as a confident and controllable method for the preparation of iron nanoparticles. XRD, EDX and ICP-AES results showed that the iron nanoclusters can be synthesized with high purity by the proposed method.