Research Article
Simple Hydrolysis Synthesis of Uniform
Rice-Shaped -FeOOH Nanocrystals and Their
Transformation to -Fe
2
O
3
Microspheres
Beer Pal Singh,
1,2
Nansy Sharma,
1
Rakesh Kumar,
1
and Ashwani Kumar
3
1
Department of Physics, C.C.S. University, Meerut 250004, India
2
Department of Physics, University of Puerto Rico, Mayag¨ uez, PR 00681-9000, USA
3
Nanoscience Laboratory, Institute Instrumentation Centre, I.I.T. Roorkee, Roorkee 247667, India
Correspondence should be addressed to Beer Pal Singh; drbeerpal@gmail.com
Received 9 May 2015; Accepted 15 June 2015
Academic Editor: Marino Lavorgna
Copyright © 2015 Beer Pal Singh et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
In the synthesis of nanostructure materials a specifc emphasis has been focused on the control of shape and orientation of
nanocrystals to obtain prerequisite properties of the materials. Nanorice is a new hybrid nanoparticle prolate geometry of nanoshells
with reduced symmetry having new exciting optical behavior. Rice-shaped -FeOOH nanocrystals have been synthesized by a
simple hydrolysis chemical method using ferric aqueous solution and urea as surfactant. Te successive calcination of -FeOOH
nanocrystals at 650
∘
C results in the formation of the porous -Fe
2
O
3
(hematite) microspheres. Te as-synthesized yield of -
FeOOH nanocrystals was characterized by X-ray difraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray
analysis (EDAX), and optical spectroscopy. Te successive transformation of rice-shaped -FeOOH nanostructures into porous
-Fe
2
O
3
(hematite) microspheres through calcination process was confrmed by XRD, SEM, and EDAX studies. Te water contact
angle of as-prepared -Fe
2
O
3
microspheres shows hydrophobic behavior of the material.
1. Introduction
Te interest in nanomaterials has grown because of their dis-
tinct structural, optical, magnetic, electronic, mechanical,
and chemical properties compared with those of the bulk
materials. Magnetic nanoparticles with a size less than
100 nm represent an important class of nanostructure mate-
rials, which allow investigations of fundamental aspects
of magnetic ordering phenomena and could lead to new
technological applications. Magnetic iron oxides have been
used in biomedicine for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
and drug delivery and as a heating mediator for cancer
thermotherapy [1]. In nonsurgical treatments of cancerous
tumors, the heating is mainly achieved via magnetization
relaxation in superparamagnetic state [2, 3] or hysteresis-loss
heating [4]. Te sensing capability of iron oxide (especially -
Fe
2
O
3
and organic -Fe
2
O
3
hybrid materials) in diferent gas
sensors is a current research interest of many researchers [5–
10]. Te most common and interesting class of iron oxide are
magnetite (Fe
3
O
4
), maghemite (-Fe
2
O
3
), and hematite (-
Fe
2
O
3
). Iron oxyhydroxide (-FeOOH) is the most efective
and important catalyst and precursor explored in the syn-
thesis of diferent geometrical nanostructures of iron oxides
[11]. Hematite (-Fe
2
O
3
) is the most thermodynamically
stable structure of iron oxide and has potential applications
with diferent shapes and geometry in nanoregime [12, 13].
Several studies have demonstrated that the fundamental
properties of metal nanostructures can be efectively tailored
by controlling their size, shape, composition, crystallinity,
and structure [14–17]. Magnetic nanostructure materials
with novel morphologies and phases are ofen required
for interesting applications. Rice-shaped metal nanoparticles
synthesis of silver [17, 18] and iron oxide nanoparticles as
templates with thin gold shell [19] to produce rice-shaped
gold core-shell nanoparticles has been devised successfully.
Various synthesis approaches such as coprecipitation [20–
22], hydrothermal synthesis [23–25], thermal decomposition
[26, 27], and sol-gel method [28–30] have been used by
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
Indian Journal of Materials Science
Volume 2015, Article ID 918424, 7 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/918424