Hira Waqar

If the particles are coated with oleic acid they they won't wet in water.

Hira Waqar

If the particles are coated with oleic acid they they won't wet in water.

Hello,

if you observe a change on your suspension (stability, decrease of aggregation) of Fe3O4 nanoparticles in an organic solvent before and after the coating with oleic acid, you can conclude that a part of oleic acid molecules is grafted to the NPs.

In addition you can try to measure the zeta potential of your NPs to find a change induce by the presence of oleic acid.

Best regards,

Two standard techniques to identify the organic coating molecules are FTIR and XPS in this context.

If you use oleates or any other surfactants like PAA, PVP, PEG, PVA etc, you can find the lattice vibration modes from FTIR precisely. For pure Fe3O4, you'll get just one absorption mode for Fe-O lattice bonds, while for coating molecules there will be a number of additional modes.

In XPS also, if you deconvolute the O 2p or C 2p bands, you'll get contributions from mono- or bidentate carboxylate groups, whatever present, against particular binding energies.

The following article has discussion on it.

Article Size-modulation of functionalized Fe3O4: Nanoscopic customiz...