Encapsulation of nano particles by surfactant reduction

Stabilization of ferromagnetic transition metal particles under an oxidizing atmosphere would lead to their use in potential applications where ferromagnetic oxide particles are in use now. It is believed that the above could be achieved through encapsulating the metal particles with a material that is stable in the oxidizing atmosphere. In this paper, we propose a novel method to encapsulate the particle with carbon and discuss the results. The particles are primarily coated with a surfactant and the coated particles are placed in an arc-discharge chamber filled with He gas and arc discharged for a specified time. In the above treatment, the He atoms are ionized and the bombardment of the He ions on the surface of the particle reduces the surfactant and leads to encapsulation of the particle. The particles treated using the above method have been characterized with XRD, FTIR, TEM and XPS.