Fabrication of Trimetallic Fe-Co-Ni Electrocatalysts for Highly Efficient Oxygen Evolution Reaction.

The development of inexpensive and well-activated water-splitting catalysts is required to reduce the use of conventional fossil fuels. In this study, a trimetallic Fe-Co-Ni catalyst was fabricated using a simple ion electrodeposition method. The metal deposition was performed using cyclic voltammetry, which was more efficient than constant-voltage deposition and significantly increased the stability of the catalyst. The synthesized material presented the morphology of a nanoflower in which the nanosheets were agglomerated. The Fe-Co-Ni catalyst exhibited excellent oxygen evolution reaction (OER) properties because the charge-transfer rate was improved owing to the synergistic effect of the metals. The OER was performed in a 1 M KOH solution using a three-electrode system, and the overpotential was 302 mV at 100 mA/cm2. In addition, the Fe-Co-Ni catalyst exhibited excellent stability in alkaline solution for more than 48 h at 200 mA/cm2. The results show that the method for preparing Fe-Co-Ni significantly improves its catalytic activity, and the resulting material could be used as an economical and efficient catalyst in future.

Simple Synthesis and Characterization of Shell-Thickness-Controlled Ni/Ni3C Core-Shell Nanoparticles.

Ni/Ni3C core-shell nanoparticles with an average diameter of approximately 120 nm were carburized via a chemical solution method using triethylene glycol. It was found that over time, the nanoparticles were covered with a thin Ni3C shell measuring approximately 1-4 nm, and each Ni core was composed of poly grains. The saturation magnetization of the core-shell nanopowders decreased in proportion to the amount of Ni3C. The synthesis mechanism of the Ni/Ni3C core-shell nanoparticles was proposed through X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analyses.

Statistical Characterization of the Morphologies of Nanoparticles through Machine Learning Based Electron Microscopy Image Analysis.

Although transmission electron microscopy (TEM) may be one of the most efficient techniques available for studying the morphological characteristics of nanoparticles, analyzing them quantitatively in a statistical manner is exceedingly difficult. Herein, we report a method for mass-throughput analysis of the morphologies of nanoparticles by applying a genetic algorithm to an image analysis technique. The proposed method enables the analysis of over 150,000 nanoparticles with a high precision of 99.75% and a low false discovery rate of 0.25%. Furthermore, we clustered nanoparticles with similar morphological shapes into several groups for diverse statistical analyses. We determined that at least 1,500 nanoparticles are necessary to represent the total population of nanoparticles at a 95% credible interval. In addition, the number of TEM measurements and the average number of nanoparticles in each TEM image should be considered to ensure a satisfactory representation of nanoparticles using TEM images. Moreover, the statistical distribution of polydisperse nanoparticles plays a key role in accurately estimating their optical properties. We expect this method to become a powerful tool and aid in expanding nanoparticle-related research into the statistical domain for use in big data analysis.

Synthesis of FeCo Alloy Nanoparticles for Electromagnetic Absorber by Polyol Method.

The correlations among magnetic properties, synthesis temperature, and composition of FeCo nanoparticles were investigated herein. Fe80Co20 alloy nanoparticles synthesized at different temperatures (383, 393, 403, 413, 428, and 443 K) showed variable compositions and aggregation degrees of the FeCo nanoparticles. Under the optimized conditions of synthesis temperature of 403 K and duration of 1 h, FeCo nanoparticles were synthesized at molar ratios of 9:1, 8:2, 7:3, 6:4, 5:5, 4:6, 3:7, 2:8, and 1:9. The FeCo alloy nanoparticles were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, vibrating sample magnetometer, fourier transform infrared, and network analyzer. With increasing Co content, the extent of aggregation increased. The cobalt ferrite phase was detected under some conditions, and all FeCo nanoparticles showed high saturation magnetization and low coercive forces. The prepared FeCo nanoparticles exhibited high permeability at a high frequency range.

Effect of Synthesis Time and Composition on Magnetic Properties of FeCo Nanoparticles by Polyol Method.

This study investigated the effect of synthesis time and composition on magnetic properties of FeCo nanoparticles. Fe75Co25, Fe66Co34, Fe52Co48 nanoparticles were synthesized by the polyol method. The saturation magnetization of Fe75 Co25, Fe66Co34, Fe52Co48 nanoparticles was 178 emu/g, 191 emu/g and 197 emu/g, respectively. The coercivity of Fe75 Co25, Fe66Co34, Fe52Co48 was 113 Oe, 131 Oe and 89.2 Oe respectively. The synthesis time of Fe52Co48 nanoparticles was also varied (2 h and 3 h) to determine the optimal synthesis time. The saturation magnetization of Fe52Co48 synthesized for 2 h, 3 h was 243 emu/g, 202 emu/g, respectively. The coercivity of Fe52Co48 synthesized for 2 h and 3 h was 46 Oe and 111 Oe, respectively. The highest saturation magnetization and lowest coercivity was obtained using a synthesis time of 2 h. Based on these results, it was confirmed that Fe52Co48 had the highest saturation magnetization and lowest coercivity among all of the compositions tested, and optimal synthesis time was 2 h.