Facile synthesis of monodisperse MnO nanoparticles from bulk MnO

A simple method is presented for the one-pot synthesis of monodisperse MnO nanoparticles (NPs) using bulk MnO as the starting material. In the proposed approach, bulk MnO powder is dissolved in hot oleic acid to form manganese oleate (Mn(RCOO)₂) and a decomposition process is then performed to obtain MnO NPs. The proposed method is environmentally friendly in that the only by-product is water, which can be easily distilled out. Conceptually, the synthesis method can be viewed as a controlled dissolution recrystallization process. It is shown that the size of the NPs can be controlled over the range of 6–32 nm via an appropriate specification of the precursor-to-oleic acid ratio and the reaction temperature (by the choice of an appropriate high b.p organic solvent). Finally, the size-dependent magnetic properties of three different monodisperse MnO NPs (7.7 nm, 19.4 nm and 31.7 nm) are studied. It is shown that the monodisperse MnO NPs exhibit a weak ferromagnetic behavior due to uncompensated surface spins at low temperatures.