Synthesis and characterization of nanosized titanomagnetite particles

This paper reports the synthesis of a series of nanosized titanomagnetite particles from iron sand in the system of Ti_xFe_3-xO₄(x ranges from 0 to 0.5). The titanomagnetite particles were prepared by the coprecipitation method. It was found that the samples crystallized in spinel structure without any impurities. In general, the higher composition of titanium tended to increase the lattice parameters (from 8.3689 to 8.3715 Å as × increases) originated from the titanium ions with the bigger ionic radii than those Fe ions substitute for magnetite. The functional groups of metal-oxygen bonding from tetrahedral and octahedral sites could be determined to form infrared band at 425-475 cm^-1and 630-475 cm^-1. Moreover, the titanium substitution into magnetite to form titanomagnetite structures did not change their optical band gap of 2.1 eV significantly. The small-angle scattering investigation presented that the samples constructed a 3-dimensional structure with a fractal dimension from 2.7 to 3.0 as × increases.