Study on the synthesis of ε-Fe3N-based magnetic fluid

In this work, stable high-saturation magnetization ε-Fe₃N magnetic fluid was synthesized successfully by the chemical reaction of iron carbonyl (Fe(CO)₅) and ammonia gas (NH₃). The experiment results have shown that the reactive conditions, such as the nitriding temperature, the gas flux ratio of Ar1:Ar2:NH₃, the reactive time, the content of surfactant and the hole size of the porous plate used, have important effects on the phase composition, the size of magnetic particles, the magnetic properties and the stability of ε-Fe₃N magnetic fluid. Also it was found that the synthetic time of stable high saturation magnetization ε-Fe₃N magnetic fluid could be shortened by adding n-heptane into the carrier, and the size of ε-Fe₃N magnetic particles could be decreased by decreasing the pore size of the porous plate used in our experiment. Finally, stable ε-Fe₃N magnetic fluid with the saturation magnetization 1663 Gs and the mean particle size 12 nm was synthesized successfully.