Synthesis of Spinel-Metal-Oxide/Biopolymer Hybrid Nanostructured Materials

In this contribution, a synthetic procedure to obtain hybrid nanostructured material from biopolymer chitosan and spinel-metal-oxide nanoparticles is described. The spinel-metal-oxide MFe 2 O 4 (M = Mn or Mg) magnetic nanoparticles were synthesized from polymeric solid solution of cations chelated within biopolymer chitosan matrix. Unlike other synthesis routes suggested in the literature, following this synthetic procedure made it possible to obtain hybrid nanostructured materials with narrow particle size distribution, with sizes ranging from 1.2 to 8 nm, even at ratios of chitosan/MFe 2 O 4 = 3. The obtained chitosan/MFe 2 O 4 hybrid nanostructured materials were analyzed by characterization techniques such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), image C s -corrected transmission electron microscopy (IC-TEM), high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), electron energy loss spectrometry (EELS), Fourier transform infrarred spectroscopy (FTIR), and static magnetometry.