Morphological, Magnetic and Optical Properties of α-Fe₂O₃ Nanoflowers

We report the morphological, structural and magnetic properties of the flower like iron oxide α-Fe₂O₃ samples prepared by the polyol method. The α-Fe₂O₃ samples were prepared by using different amount of the iron chloride in the starting materials and the impact of the different iron chloride amount on the morphology of the precursor and after heat treatment of the samples was investigated. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis confirmed the formation of the α-Fe₂O₃ phase without detecting any impurity phase. The transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and the field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) results showed that the flower like structures are composed of nanopetals with an average thickness and width of 60 nm and 735 nm respectively. A strong impact on the formation of the flower like iron oxide and the morphologies of these samples was observed with the variation of iron chloride concentration during synthesis process. The magnetic hysteresis measurements demonstrated that as prepared samples displayed ferromagnetic behavior and magnetic properties were found to be depending on the morphologies of as-prepared samples. The band gap energy was measured by using Tauc’s method, and values for all the samples were found to be in the range 1.94–2.27 eV. The results obtained in the present work show that the α-Fe₂O₃ can be used as potential candidate material for use in gas sensors, photocatalysis and energy storage devices.