Facile fabrication of magnetite microtubes from electrospun fiber template
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cile fabrication of magnetite microtubes from electrospun fiber template Ruiyu Wang, Dan Chen, Lulu Ren, Juan Guo, and Tianxi Liua) Department of Macromolecular Science, Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers, Ministry of Education, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, People’s Republic of China (Received 3 January 2011; accepted 7 March 2011)
The preparation and characterization of Fe3O4 microtubes by a polymer-based template approach were described. Fe3O4 tubes with diameter of 600 6 50 nm and an average tube thickness of about 50 nm were fabricated after removing the electrospun polystyrene fiber template. The microtubes were composed of individual Fe3O4 nanocrystals. The synthesis process was ambient, generalizable, inexpensive, and nontoxic. The magnetite tubes thus fabricated behave with a saturation magnetization of 37 emu/g measured in the vibrating sample magnetometer. The microtubes prepared in this way might find potential applications in catalysis, magnetic fluid, and biological field. Magnetic nano-/micro-materials have stimulated great interest not only for its fundamental scientific interest but also for its many technological applications. Among the magnetic materials, magnetite (Fe3O4) is especially intriguing because of its unique electrical and magnetic properties. In the past decade, there has been increasing attention and effort paid to the design and synthesis of Fe3O4 with controlled size and morphology. For the fabrication of tubular structure, in particular, different synthetic routes have been applied, such as template reactions,1 rolling up layered materials,2 and hydrothermal methods.3 The template-based method to produce Fe3O4 or other metal oxide tubular structure is of prominence for its good control of dimension and surface morphology. The templates used range from metal oxide, like MgO,2 ZnO,3 and anodic aluminum oxide,4 to carbon nanotubes.5 Compared with these inorganic template materials, using polymer as the template has its own merits, including the ease of fabrication, potential for large scale applications, economical cost, and low decomposition temperature. Electrospinning is a facile and versatile route to produce exceptionally long polymer nano-/micro-scale fibers possessing uniform diameter and good composition control. Electrospun fibers as the template, defined as TUFT (tubes by fiber templates) by Greiner first,6 have already been used satisfactorily to produce tubular structure for a wide range of materials, such as ZnO,7 TiO2,8 and Al2O3.9 However, this strategy has not yet been applied to the fabrication of Fe3O4 tubes.
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Address all correspondence to this author. e-mail: [email protected] DOI: 10.1557/jmr.2011.75 1072
J. Mater. Res., Vol. 26, No. 9, May 14, 2011
http://journals.cambridge.org
Downloaded: 12 Apr 2015
Herein, we use the electrospun polystyrene (PS) fibers as the template to fabricate tubular structure of Fe3O4. Although the electrospun fibers have been applied as template in previous studies, their process normally uses techniques such as chemica
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