Abstract
The major challenge in assessing the performance of magnetite nanoparticles (MNPs) in removing pollutants from wastewater is the agglomeration of those nanoparticles into a bulky cluster size. In this study, different concentration of poly (sodium 4-styrene sulfonate) (PSS) were coated around the surface of MNPs to increase the particles’ colloidal stability. Both dynamic light scattering (DLS) and thermogravimetric (TGA) analyses have proved the success coating of PSS onto MNPs, whereby the cluster size of the functionalized MNPs were shown notably depends on the applied dosage of PSS. PSS/MNPs functionalization at molar ratio of 6:1 was found to have the smallest cluster size at 148.4 ± 0.22 nm. These results have provided some insight about the particles’ colloidal stability that could be useful for environmental remediation.