Synthesis of Fe-Doped TiO2/α-Fe2O3 Core-Shell Nanowires Using Co-Electrospinning and Their Magnetic Property

Abstract

We synthesized Fe-doped $TiO_2/{\alpha}-Fe_2O_3$ core-shell nanowires(NWs) by means of a co-electrospinning method and demonstrated their magnetic properties. To investigate the structural, morphological, chemical, and magnetic properties of the samples, X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy were used, as was a vibrating sample magnetometer. The morphology of the nanostructures obtained after calcination at $500^{\circ}C$ exhibited core/shell NWs consisting of $TiO_2$ in the core region and ${\alpha}-Fe_2O_3$ in the shell region. In addition, the XPS results confirmed the formation of Fe-doped $TiO_2$ by the doping effect of $Fe^{3+}$ ions into the $TiO_2$ lattice, which can affect the ferromagnetic properties in the core region. For comparison, pure ${\alpha}-Fe_2O_3$ NWs were also fabricated using an electrospinning method. With regard to the magnetic properties, the Fe-doped $TiO_2/{\alpha}-Fe_2O_3$ core-shell NWs exhibited improved saturation magnetization(Ms) of approximately ~2.96 emu/g, which is approximately 6.1 times larger than that of pure ${\alpha}-Fe_2O_3$ NWs. The performance enhancement can be explained by three main mechanisms: the doping effect of Fe ions into the $TiO_2$ lattice, the size effect of the $Fe_2O3_$ nanoparticles, and the structural effect of the core-shell nanostructures.