(684h) Size and Morphology Control of Iron Phosphate- From Nucleation to Growth

Iron phosphate is a widely used functional material in the fields of lithium battery, catalysis, adsorption, ferroelectrics and glass and steel industrial. The successful application of iron phosphate in various fields is highly purity, size, morphology and crystal structure dependent. In this work, we developed a common strategy for preparing pure iron phosphate materials with various size and morphology. Composed of fast precipitation in microreactor and following thermal aging treatment, it provided separate and facile process control from nucleation to growth. For examples, as most of iron source precipitated at the nucleation step, size of iron phosphate nanoparticles could be regulated in the range of 9-50 nm by changing supersaturation through coordination effects of inorganic acids; as considerable amount of iron source was delayed for precipitation by simply changing the addition of phosphoric acid, morphology and crystal structure of iron phosphate could be controlled from amorphous nanoparticles to monoclinic microsheets and microspheres in the thermal aging treatment process. Furthermore, we discussed how different mechanisms combined and looked into potential applications with aspects of iron phosphate materials and preparation methods.