Phase investigation of as-prepared iron oxide/hydroxide produced by sol-gel synthesis

In this work, a xerogel nanostructure was prepared by a sol-gel method. Fe(NO3)(3) . 9H(2)O was used as precursor, ethanol as solvent and propylene oxide as gelation agent. Fourier transform infrared, X-ray diffraction and Mossbauer spectroscopies were used to characterize the as-prepared xerogel phases. The combined results of these techniques indicate the presence of hematite (alpha-Fe2O3) and goethite (alpha-FeO(OH)) in the inorganic polymer. Although the first two techniques supported the presence of an iron hydroxide phase (Fe(OH)(3)), no Mossbauer parameters were found in the literature to confirm it. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.