The synthesis of iron-nickel alloy nanoparticles using a reverse micelle technique

Nanosized Fe0.2Ni0.8 particles were prepared by reducing their salts with sodium borohydride (NaBH4) in cationic water-in-oil (w/o) microemulsions of water/cetyl-trimethyl-amonium bromide (CTAB) and n-butanol/isooctane at 25 °C.According to the TEM and X-ray diffraction analyses, the synthesized particles were around 4-12 nm in size. Due to their nanodimensions, the particles had a primitive cubic (pc) structure rather than the body-centered cubic (BCC) structure of the bulk material. An examination of the synthesis from the reverse micelle reveals that the morphology of the iron-nickel alloy nanoparticles depends mainly on the microemulsion`s composition. The magnetization of the nanoparticles was much lower than that of the bulk material, reflecting the influence of the nanodimensions on the particlesć magnetizations