Abstract
We present, for the first time, on a facile route for the fabrication of highly crystalline Co3O4 nanoparticles using trietanolamine (TEA) assisted hydrothermal synthesis route and single precursor. Synthesized material has been evaluated for its structural, morphological and magnetic properties using x-ray powder diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM) techniques. The material has been identified as highly crystalline Co3O4, with superparamagnetic character due to size confinement. Estimated particle size from SEM is about 10 nm, which is close to the magnetic domain size (estimated from VSM as 8.4 +/- 1.7 nm) and the crystallite size (estimated from XRD as 11 pm 4 nm), which reveal nearly single crystalline character of Co3O4 nanoparticles. The suggested route is facile, which provides a good size control over the nanoparticles, and can be used for the fabrication of other ceramic materials.