PEG-assisted synthesis and formation mechanism of Mg(OH) 2 nanostructures using natural brine
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PEG‑assisted synthesis and formation mechanism of Mg(OH)2 nanostructures using natural brine Sadegh Yousefi1 · Behrooz Ghasemi1 · Mohammad Tajally1 Received: 7 April 2020 / Accepted: 16 July 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract In this study, magnesium hydroxide nanoflakes (MHF) were synthesized using poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG 4000) surfactant by exploiting chemical precipitation method from an impure brine enriched by large amounts of CaCl2 for the first time. Synthesized samples were characterized by X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM), Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), Energy Dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) and UV–Vis absorption spectroscopy. The effect of PEG on structural and morphological characteristics of synthesized samples, as well as the formation mechanism of MH nanostructures from the brine in the presence or absence of PEG (0, 5 and 10 mL), were precisely investigated. Obtained results implied the positive effect of the used surfactant on the uniformity of the morphology, the agglomeration behavior of MH nanoplates, and the decrease of the crystallite size (from 25.26 to 19.35 nm) of synthesized nanoparticles from the brine, which the optimum amount of this surfactant was 5 mL. In addition, UV–Vis spectroscopy results and investigation of optical properties showed that the presence of PEG led to an increasing in the value of the optical bandgap energy of MHF from 4.7 to 5 eV, indicating their ability to be used in optoelectronic nano-devices. Keywords Synthesis · Crystal growth · Mg(oh)2 · Nanostructures · PEG · Brine
1 Introduction Magnesium hydroxide (MH) is an important inorganic material and is usually extracted from seawater or brine via precipitation process [1]. This chemical has attracted much attention due to its environmentally friendly, alkalinity, hydrophilicity, low flammability, nontoxic, noncorrosive, and thermally stable behavior [2, 3] and has many applications due to its well-known physical and chemical properties. Besides that, nano-MH can be widely exploited in acidic waste neutralizer, papermaking industry, fertilizer additive [4, 5], chemical sensors [6], pharmacy [4], flameretardants [7], nano-MgO production [8, 9], as a filler of polyurethane composite foams for improved sound absorption [10], solar cells and submicron optoelectronics devices [11], several routes have been utilized to synthesize its nanostructures, such as sol–gel method [12], hydrothermal * Sadegh Yousefi [email protected] 1
Faculty of Metallurgy and Materials Science, Semnan University, Semnan, Iran
route [13], chemical precipitation method [14], microwaveassisted method [11], sonochemical method [15, 16]. Researchers believe that the shape and crystal size of nanostructures are strongly depended on the preparation process and the precursors [17]. The formation mechanism of MH nanostructures have been reported in several literature [5, 11, 14, 18, 19] and sy
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