Issue 4, 2020

Colloidal dispersions of oxide nanoparticles in ionic liquids: elucidating the key parameters

Abstract

The combination of ionic liquid and nanoparticle properties is highly appealing for a number of applications. However, thus far there has been limited systematic exploration of colloidal stabilisation in these solvents, which provides an initial direction towards their employment. Here, we present a new and comprehensive study of the key parameters affecting the colloidal stability in dispersions of oxide nanoparticles in ionic liquids. Twelve diverse and representative ionic liquids are used to disperse iron oxide nanoparticles. The liquid interface of these nanoparticles has been carefully tuned in a molecular solvent before transferring into an ionic liquid, without passing through the powder state. Multiscale-characterisation is applied, on both the micro and the nano scale, incorporating both small angle X-ray scattering and dynamic light scattering. The results show the surface charge of the nanoparticles to be a crucial parameter, controlling the layering of the surrounding ionic liquid, and hence producing repulsion allowing efficient counterbalancing of the attractive interactions. For intermediate charges the strength of the repulsion depends on the specific system causing varying levels of aggregation or even none at all. Several samples consist of sufficiently repulsive systems leading to single dispersed nanoparticles, stable in the long term. Thanks to the magnetic properties of the chosen iron oxide nanoparticles, true ferrofluids are produced, appropriate for applications using magnetic fields. The strength and breadth of the observed trends suggests that the key parameters identified here can be generalised to most ionic liquids.

Graphical abstract: Colloidal dispersions of oxide nanoparticles in ionic liquids: elucidating the key parameters

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
05 Sep 2019
Accepted
15 Jan 2020
First published
20 Jan 2020
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Nanoscale Adv., 2020,2, 1560-1572

Colloidal dispersions of oxide nanoparticles in ionic liquids: elucidating the key parameters

J. C. Riedl, M. A. Akhavan Kazemi, F. Cousin, E. Dubois, S. Fantini, S. Loïs, R. Perzynski and V. Peyre, Nanoscale Adv., 2020, 2, 1560 DOI: 10.1039/C9NA00564A

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements