Effects of synthesis parameters on the particle size of iron-nickel alloyed nanoparticles

Iron-nickel alloyed powders represent a wide range of applications, especially in the automotive industry. As well, such alloys are considered for many applications in new and advanced industries due to their special magnetic properties. In such applications, magnetic properties are highly dependent on the chemical composition and ratio of elements in the alloy. An interesting nickel-iron alloy is FexNi(1-x), while x=20-50 wt.%. This alloy that called permalloy due to its high magnetic permeability has also high magnetic saturation and curie temperature. Because of considerable magnetic properties, permalloy is used for many applications such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), sensors, recording heads, electromagnetic shielding and absorbing materials. In this paper, Factorial design of experiments was used to investigate effect of synthesis parameters on the size of Fe0.2Ni0.8 bimetallic particles. Synthesis temperature, its time and bath pH were used as the model variables and as an output, mean particle size of bimetallic particles measured by particle size analyzer (PSA). It was found that, mean particle size decreases with increasing pH and decreasing the synthesis temperature and its time. As well, 3D surfaces showed that temperature variations may affected on process pH and reduced the particle size. TEM micrograph of particles synthesized at such conditions indicated that the particles have spherical shape with mean particle size of 7 nm.

Keywords:

Bimetallic particles , Microemulsion , Factorial design of experiments , Transmission Electron Microscopy