Development and characterization of NIR transparent ferrofluids

Abstract

The projected consisted of the synthesis of a stable yttrium iron garnet (YIG) ferrofluid with a seeded growth method in which yttrium aluminum nanoparticles (YAG) as a growth seed in order to over the high nucleation barrier of YIG. Synthesis was done in 1,4 Butadiol in a autoclave. The ferrofluid was characterized with transmission electron microscopy (TEM) in order to determine the size range of the particles, vibrating-sample magnetometer (VSM) to determine the dipole moments and to calculate the order of magnitude of the size of the particles. Furthermore X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD) was used to confirm if yttrium iron garnets was formed. Magnetic sedimentation velocimetry (MSV) was also used in order to determine the magnetophoretic velocity of sedimenting nanoparticles from which the size of nanoparticle aggregates could be calculated. Lastly UV-Vis was used in order to determine the order of magnitude of the absorbance of the synthesized ferrofluid adjusted for volume fraction which was then compared to the absorbance of a conventional ferrofluid. The characterization methods were done in order to determine is the synthesized YIG ferrofluid had a lower absorption coefficient to conventional ferrofluids.