Hot off the press: new Nanoscale paper published
A Nanoscale paper on “Ultrafast continuous synthesis of crystalline ferrite nanoparticles in supercritical ethanol” ( has recently been published. It is the result from the collaboration with the group of Cyril Aymonier from the ICMB-CNRS in Bordeaux, where Oana Pascu spent an internship during her Ph.D. and now she holds a post-doctoral contract.
Nanoscale 5 (2013) 2126-2132, DOI: 10.1039/c3nr33501a
Magnetic nanoparticles (NPs) are of increasing interest in various industrially relevant products. For these, the development of greener and faster approaches facilitating scaling-up production is of paramount importance. Here, we report a novel, green and potentially scalable approach for the continuous and ultrafast (90 s) synthesis of superparamagnetic ferrite NPs (MnFe2O4, Fe3O4) in supercritical ethanol (scEtOH) at a fairly moderate temperature (260 °C). ScEtOH exhibits numerous advantages such as its production from bio-resources, its lack of toxicity and its relatively low supercritical coordinates (pc = 6.39 MPa and Tc = 243 °C), being therefore appropriate for the development of sustainable technologies. The present study is completed by the investigation of both in situ and ex situ NP surface functionalization. The as-obtainednanoparticles present good crystallinity, sizes below 8 nm, superparamagnetic behavior at room temperature and high saturation magnetization. Moreover, depending on the capping strategy, the ferrite NPs present extended (for in situ coated NPs) or short-term (for ex situ coated NPs) colloidal stability.
accepted paper, hot off the press, Nanoscale, paper, published