Synthesis and Characterization of Barium Oxide Nanoparticles

Abstract

The X-ray diffraction (XRD) pattern (Fig.3.1) proved that he synthesized material is MgO of hexagonal phase. No impurities were detected in this pattern which implies hexagonal phase MgO could be obtained in the current synthetic route and all the crystal structures agreed with reported JCPDS data. A definite line broadening of the direction peaks is an indication that the synthesized materials are in nanometer range. The crystallite size was calculated from Scherrer formula applied to major peaks and was found to be around 30nm. The lattice parameters calculated in accordance with the reported value. Average grain size was calculated using Scherrer formula, D= 0.9λ/Bcosθ B Where, λ -X-ray wavelength (1.5418) θ B -Angle of the Bragg diffraction peak (in radians) B -Line width at half maximum After a correction for the instrumental broadening, an average value of the plate shaped MgO nanoparticles were found to be 20nm whereas the height of the crystallites was 50 ± 10 nm. The sharpness of the diffraction peaks indicates that the size of the crystallites is about 50nm. XRD pattern of magnesium oxide Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) Electron microscopy techniques, provides information on the size, shape, and location of the individual nanoparticles. It is a formidable task, however, to determine statistically meaningful data on the size distribution of nanoparticles in industrial heterogeneous catalysts, especially when the sizes of the nanoparticles vary significantly with their spatial distribution. The SEM image of the MgO sample is shown in (Fig.2). It can be seen from the figure1 that MgO particles exclusively consist of hexagonal lamellar-like structures and the sizes of MgO are 50±10 nm length or width and about 20 nm thickness. Fig 2 SEM image of the MgO Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) TEM techinque is useful to understand if the small particles are amorphous or cyrystalline; orderliness of the particles and if the particles and if the particles contain many incoherant domains. TEM image of a single platelet of MgO sample,(Fig. 3.3) in which the MgO nanocrystallites exhibit hexagonal shape and very homogeneous crystal structures without any observable pores.