Cobalt-based Magnetic Nanoparticles: Design, Synthesis and Characterization

The ever-increasing desire for more energy attainable from a smaller volume of matter has driven researchers to explore advanced materials at the molecular or even atomic size scale. Magnetic materials at the nanometer size scale have been the subject of enormous research effort worldwide for more than half a century. Different magnetic nanoparticles have shown different behavior in the absence and presence of an external magnetic field, which has led them to be categorized as soft (easy to demagnetize) or hard (resistive against demagnetization) magnets. Applications range from medical and biomedical devices to magnetic recording media and magnetic sensing have emphasized the importance of this class of materials. Soft magnetic phases have found application in power generation and magnetic targeted drug delivery, while hard magnets have been subject of extensive research for application as energy storage media. Discovery of the exchange-coupling phenomenon between the spins of two adjacent hard and soft magnetic phases which means taking advantage of both high magnetic moment of the soft phase as well as high coercivity of the hard phase has attracted scientists to develop advanced materials for energy storage with no usage of fossil fuels: clean energy.;In this Dissertation, synthesis of pure phase, soft FeCo nanoparticles with high magnetic moment and hard phase CoxC nanoparticles possessing high coercivity is reported. The polyol method (chemical co-precipitating at polyhydric alcohol as reducing agent) is used to make FeCo and Co xC nanoparticles and the effects of important reaction kinetics parameters on the structure and magnetic properties of the products are studied. Careful analysis of correlations between these parameters and the properties of the magnetic particles has made synthesis of FeCo and CoxC nanoparticles with desired properties possible. Fabrication of MnAlC-FeCo heterostructures as a rare earth-free alternative for high-performance permanent magnet is also reported. To synthesize MnAlC-FeCo, mechanical alloying and dry mixing of MnAlC and FeCo nanoparticles are accomplished followed by annealing in a furnace. Morphological and magnetic properties of the nanoparticles are obtained by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), x-ray diffractometry (XRD), vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM) and physical property measuring system (PPMS) magnetometry, respectively. Overall, the achieved results in this work enable synthesis of high moment FeCo and high coercivity CoxC with desired structure and magnetic properties obtained through polyol method. In particular, this Dissertation provides the technique to fabricate cobalt carbide nanoparticles without using rare earth elements as a catalyst or as heterogeneous seed nuclei at any stage: pre-processing, synthesis and post-processing.;Although the experimental results of this work suggest successful fabrication of desired materials, there are many unanswered questions and unresolved challenges regarding reaction mechanism and optimizing the magnetic properties of these materials. Therefore, some recommendations are provided at the end of this Dissertation for further studies and future work. It should be noted that, implementing first principal calculations on these particles will provide better explanations and enable prediction of structure and magnetic properties of the nanoparticles and facilitate designing more complex heterostructures.