Spectroscopic studies of the effects of mechanochemical synthesis on BaTiO3 nanocolloids prepared using high-energy ball-milling

Abstract

BaTiO3 ferroelectric nanoparticles have provided benefits to numerous liquid crystal applications, while the chemistry of these nanocolloids was not fully understood. In this paper, infrared absorption spectra reveal that ferroelectric BaTiO3 nanocolloids are more than BaTiO3 nanoparticles in heptane with an oleic acid surfactant as previously believed. It is shown that ball-milling plays a bigger role than just a top-down approach for creating nanoparticles; it also is a means of mechanochemical synthesis. This paper demonstrates that mechanochemical synthesis is responsible for converting a large amount of the oleic acid to a metal carboxylate compound. This suggests that one cannot treat the oleic acid as a mere surfactant when considering new methods/recipes to improve fabrication processes for creating highly ferroelectric nanoparticles or when exploring the various effects that the organic additives may have on liquid crystal systems.