W/O microemulsions consisting of Aerosol OT (AOT) or polyoxyethylene (6) nonylphenyl ether (NP-6) /water/cyclohexane or isooctane were utilized to prepare Fe
3O
4 sols. Two methods were carried out for the preparation. One procedure was addition of aqueous FeCl
2 solution to the mixture of two kinds of AOT/H
2O/isooctane microemulsions solubilizing aqueous FeCl
3 and aqueous NH3. An alternative one was to add the NP-6/aqueous FeCl
2 solution/cyclohexane microemulsion in AOT cyclohexane solubilizing FeCl
3 and NH
3 solutions.
The monodisperse magnetite sols having superfine particles of 30-50 ÅA in diameter were obtained. It was apparent that the sols show superparamagnetic behavior from the temperature dependence of Mössbauer spectra. The sols were also stable for long time. The remarkable stability was explained from the entropic repulsion energy of alkyl groups of surfactant molecules adsorbed on the sol particles.
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