Controlled synthesis of size-tunable nickel and nickel oxide nanoparticles using water-in-oil microemulsions

Ajeet Kumar, Amit Saxena, Arnab De, Ravi Shankar and Subho Mozumdar

Abstract

Industrial demands have generated a growing need to synthesize pure metal and metal–oxide nanoparticles of a desired size. We report a novel and convenient method for the synthesis of spherical, size tunable, well dispersed, stable nickel and nickel oxide nanoparticles by reduction of nickel nitrate at room temperature in a TX-100/n-hexanol/cyclohexane/water system by a reverse microemulsion route. We determined that reduction with alkaline sodium borohydrate in nitrogen atmosphere leads to the formation of nickel nanoparticles, while the use of hydrazine hydrate in aerobic conditions leads to the formation of nickel oxide nanoparticles. The influence of several reaction parameters on the size of nickel and nickel oxide nanoparticles were evaluated in detail. It was found that the size can be easily controlled either by changing the molar ratio of water to surfactant or by simply altering the concentration of the reducing agent. The morphology and structure of the nanoparticles were characterized by quasi-elastic light scattering (QELS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), x-ray diffraction (XRD), electron diffraction analysis (EDA) and energy dispersive x-ray (EDX) spectroscopy. The results show that synthesized nanoparticles are of high purity and have an average size distribution of 5–100 nm. The nanoparticles prepared by our simple methodology have been successfully used for catalyzing various chemical reactions