It says that sodium acrylate is used as a stabilizer and to improve solubility of the precursors. And without its presence the particles aggregate. Can I use PVP instead??
Hello Medha, you definitely can try using PVP instead of sodium acrylate, especially if you want to avoid using ionic medium. The main role of the polymer is creating the steric obstacles for forming particles to prevent aggregation. However results might differ from expected since equilibrium might be shifted due to many factors including adsorption behavior of polymer onto forming particles, but it is difficult to predict how exactly. Moreover you mentioned that sodium acrylate assists solubility of precursors. You can try to minimize the differences by choosing the concentration and molecular weight matching the viscosity of solution of sodium acrylate if known.
Nevertheless it is worth trying you might get even more interesting results than expected.
Olga
It depends on the method you are selecting for synthesis of magnetic composite. If you are selecting pyrolysis one pot method then you wont be needing PVA too. But in case you are planning for co-precipitation then you cannot use PVA. Infact if you wanna stabilize the iron nanoparticles first and then plan to conjugate it with graphene oxide then also PVA wont b useful.
Are you thinking of 'polymer wrapping' mechanism published by O'Connell back in 2001? I think there was another paper on silver nanoparticles where they used PVP as a surfactant as well. Anyways, it may be worth it to investigate because I used this method to coat CNTs and I saw a huge improvement in long term stability in DMAc. I'm not sure what materials/solvents are involved in your process, but I would make sure PVP is compatible or else you will see the opposite effect. You may already have done this, but just do a quick literasure review on polymer wrapping and this should help you out! Best of luck!
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