A comparative study on the physico-chemical properties of sol-gel electrospun cobalt oxide nanofibres from two different polymeric binders
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Date
2015
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Publisher
Royal Society of Chemistry
Abstract
In this study, two different sacrificial polymeric binders, namely poly(2-ethyl-2-oxazoline) (PEtOx) and poly(styrene-co-acrylonitrile) (SAN) along with cobalt acetate tetrahydrate (CATH), as the metal oxide precursor, were used for the fabrication of Co<inf>3</inf>O<inf>4</inf> nanofibres through sol-gel electrospinning. It was observed that the degradation behaviour and physical properties of SAN and PEtOx influenced the structure, morphology and spectral properties of Co<inf>3</inf>O<inf>4</inf> nanofibres, as the properties of the nanofibres obtained from the aforementioned systems were compared with each other. The grain size, shape and the activation energies for grain growth of Co<inf>3</inf>O<inf>4</inf> nanofibres obtained from these two polymeric systems were different. This difference in grain size and shape caused a difference in the optical band gap energies and the magnetic properties of the Co<inf>3</inf>O<inf>4</inf> nanofibres. This study reveals that one can tailor the characteristics of cobalt oxide nanofibres by an appropriate selection of polymeric binders for sol-gel electrospinning. © The Royal Society of Chemistry.
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Keywords
Activation energy, Automata theory, Binders, Bins, Cobalt, Electrospinning, Energy gap, Grain growth, Grain size and shape, Metals, Nanofibers, Sol-gel process, Sol-gels, Spinning (fibers), Styrene, Comparative studies, Degradation behaviours, Metal oxide precursors, Optical band gap energy, Physicochemical property, Poly(2-ethyl-2-oxazoline), Poly(styrene-co-acrylonitrile), Spectral properties, Polymers
Citation
RSC Advances, 2015, 5, 99, pp. 81429-81437