Abstract
A hydrothermal and combustion-reduction process with polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) as a restricted growth agent and galactose as a reducing agent was developed for the fabrication of rod-like α-Fe(2)O(3)/Fe(3)O(4) magnetic nanocomposites (MNCs). Firstly, β-FeOOH nanorods (NRs) were fabricated by the hydrothermal method, with PVP as a restricted growth agent. To obtain a smaller size for better applications in the biomedical field, the concentrations of FeCl(3) and PVP, the hydrothermal temperature, and the hydrothermal time were optimized as 0.171 M, 0.163 mM, 100 °C, and 8 h, and the fabricated β-FeOOH NRs were 193.1 nm in average length and 43.2 nm in average diameter. Then, with β-FeOOH NRs as precursors, α-Fe(2)O(3)/Fe(3)O(4) MNCs were prepared via the combustion-reduction process with galactose as a reducing agent; the factors of the calcination temperature and time and the mass ratio of β-FeOOH and galactose were assessed as 300 °C, 0.5 h, and 1:2, respectively. The prepared α-Fe(2)O(3)/Fe(3)O(4) MNCs under the optimized conditions were 81.6 nm in average length and 23.9 nm in average diameter, while their saturation magnetization reached 69.8 emu/g.