Ultrasound enhanced ferrite plating

This paper is the first report of sonochemistry (or application of power ultrasound to stimulate chemical processes in liquids) combined with ferrite plating - a wet chemical method to synthesize ferrite films from aqueous solution. Due to the ultrasonic enhancement we have successfully encapsulated polyacrylate spheres, similar to 0.25 mu m in diameter, with magnetite in a aqueous solution of FeCl2 at 65 degrees C. This broke through the lower limit (similar to 0.3 mu m) of the size of the particles to be encapsulate with magnetite without applying the ultrasound waves. The magnetite coating has magnetization (92emu/g) which is the same value as that reported for bulk samples, being increased from that (65emu/g) obtained without the ultrasonic enhancement.