One-step Cathodic Electrochemical Synthesis and Characterization of Dextran Coated Magnetite Nanoparticles

In this research, a simple and efficient cathodic electrochemical deposition (CED) route was developed for the preparation of magnetite nanoparticles (NPs) in an aqueous media. The surface of magnetite NPs was also coated for the first time via an in situ procedure during the CED process. In this method, initially, the Fe3O4 NPs (with size ~10 nm) were prepared from the Fe2+/Fe3+ chloride bath through CED process. Then, dextran as the coating agent was coated on the surface of Fe3O4 NPs during the CED process. The prepared NPs were characterized by different techniques such as XRD, FE-SEM, TEM, IR, TGA, DLS and VSM. The XRD results proved the pure magnetite i.e. Fe3O4 crystal phase of the prepared samples. Morphological observations through FE-SEM and TEM revealed particle morphology with nano-sizes of 8 nm and 12 nm for the naked and dextran coated NPs, respectively. The dextran coat on the surfaces of NPs was confirmed by FT-IR and DSC-TGA analyses. The average hydrodynamic diameters of 17 nm and 54 nm were measured from DLS analysis for the naked and dextran coated NPs, respectively. The magnetic analysis by VSM revealed that prepared NPs have superparamagnetic behavior, i.e. Ms=82.3 emu g–1, magnetization Mr=0.71 emug–1 and Ce=2.3 Oe for the naked NPs, and Ms=43.1 emu g–1, Mr=0.47 emu g–1 and Ce=0.81Oe for the dextran coated NPs. These results implied that this electrochemical strategy can be recognized as an effective preparation method of polymer coated Fe3O4 NPs.