The Effect of pH and Duration of Hydrothermal Process on the Synthesis of Manganese Ferrite Nanoparticles

Manganese ferrite nanoparticles (NPs) have different applications, especially in medical diagnosis and treatment as well as the biomolecule separation,. In this research, the effects of various parameters such as the pH of reaction solution and the hydrothermal process duration on the synthesis of spinel phase in NPs were evaluated. Crystal structure, chemical composition, morphology and size of synthesized particles were investigated by the X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis and field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) equipped with energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS). The XRD results showed that the process duration of 12 h and pH=11 were suitable for the formation of monophase manganese ferrite NPs. The FE-SEM investigations showed that the average size of the synthesized NPs was about 50 nm. Moreover, the EDS analysis showed the presence of about 20% of manganese in the NPs structure. Hydrothermally synthesized manganese ferrite NPs in this researchcould be, therefore, a good candidate for the biomedical application due to their small size and narrow size distribution.