Facile synthesis of nanosized ε-Fe2O3 particles on the silica support

An approach is suggested to synthesize the epsilon-Fe2O3 particles supported on silica with the mean size of few nanometers, narrow size distribution and no admixture of any other iron oxide polymorphs. The facile synthesis is based on the pore filling impregnation method by iron sulfate (II) water solution with the following annealing procedure at similar to 1173 K. It is shown that the epsilon-Fe2O3 nanoparticles obtained are stable up to similar to 1173 K and possess superparamagnetic behavior up to similar to 870 K.