Avnish Kumar Arora

Synthesis, Characterization, and Magnetic Studies of - Nanoparticles

Very fine nanosized metal oxide, namely, iron oxide (α-Fe2O3) has been synthesized by precipitation method using ammonia as precipitating agent and characterized by using XRD (X-ray diffraction), TGA/DTA, surface area measurement, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and magnetic measurements techniques. XRD studies show that iron oxide was formed as α-Fe2O3 instead of the commonly formed magnetite nanoparticles (Fe3O4) or a mixture of magnetite (Fe3O4) and maghemite (γ-Fe2O3, cubic), and it has rhombohedral structure. Magnetic measurements showed that iron oxide has five unpaired electrons and is ferromagnetic in nature, Ms value being 1.7 emu/g. The particle size of the synthesized iron oxide was determined by TEM. TEM images show that the size of particles of Fe2O3 varied from 15 nm to 49 nm with average crystallite size 35 nm.

Synthesis of ZnO Nanoparticle and its Application in Catalytic Hydrolysis of p-Acetoxynitrobenzene

Synthesis of ZnO nanoparticle and the hydrolysis of p-Acetoxynitrobenzene to p-Nitrophenol (p-NP) under aqueous phase conditions in the presence of ZnO nanoparticle has been carried out. Zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles (NPs) are prepared by using simple precipitation method. Ammonia is used as a precipitating agent and ZnCl2⋅4H2O as a starting material. The obtained ZnO NPs are characterized by using different techniques namely XRD, TGA/DTA, TEM, FT-IR, magnetic measurements and BET surface area analysis. ZnO NPs are evaluated for their catalytic properties in hydrolysis of p-Acetoxynitrobenzene to p-Nitrophenol (p-NP) under aqueous phase conditions. The effect of temperature and concentration has also been studied for the catalytic hydrolysis. This is to emphasize that the method used to synthesize these NPs is much simple and fiscal. The obtained ZnO NPs work as a good catalyst for the above conversion and are of low cost and easy to synthesize.