Synthesis of iron sand into nano Mn-Ferrite

Abstract

Magnetic material, Mn-Ferrite, was prepared from iron sand using precipitation and sol-gel methods. The methods were applied to produce a homogenous and nanosized powder. The precipitation process was taken place at room temperature. MnO2 and Fe3O4 were dissolved with HCl solution to obtained MnCl2, FeCl2 and FeCl3 and the resulted solution were mixed. NH4OH and NaOH solutions were added into mixed solution to produce precipitated material. At the heating temperature of 70°C, 59% of (Mn,Fe)2O3 was obtained with its particle size around 1-10 nm. By applying sol-gel method, the iron sand was processed into iron (III) nitrate using nitric acid. Then Iron (III) nitrate was mixed with manganese (II) nitrate in the EG solvent and heated for 2 hours in 100°C until gel was formed. To get the powder, the gel was dried at 150°C for 2 hours and then continued into 350 -700°C for 2 hours. The XRD characterization shows that the powder produced from 350°C heating contain 100% of (Mn,Fe)3O4 with spinel cubic structure. At the heating treatment of 700°C, the compound was changed into (Mn,Fe)2O3 and MnFeO3. By applying Scherrer method, it was known that the average particle size
was 1 nm and homogenous. The XRF characterization of the material resulted by both of the methods indicates that there were impurity elements such as Ti, Mo, Zn, Ca, Cu and Ni exist in the sample, since the study was used row material of iron sand.