Green and chemically synthesized magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles-based chitosan composites: preparation, characterization, and future perspectives

Magnetic nanoparticles have recently attained much interest due to the wide distribution of their applications. The current work is concerned with the synthesis of magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles using green and chemical methods. Licorice extract has been used as the main factor for the production of green synthesized magnetic nanoparticles (GSM), compared with the co-precipitation method for the production of chemically synthesized magnetic nanoparticles (CSM). Both scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and particle size analyzer (PSA) proved the formation of the particles in the nanoscale with the range of 50–110 nm and 40–100 nm for GSM and CSM, respectively. Furthermore, Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) indicated the existence of iron and oxygen elements in both the samples and proved the formation of iron oxide nanoparticles. Both types of nanoparticles were solely integrated with chitosan for the formation of magnetic-dependent membranes followed by integration-dependent characterization using SEM and Raman spectroscopy. The tensile properties of the membranes showed higher elongation and strain properties of chitosan/GSM membrane compared with plain chitosan or chitosan/CSM membranes, which candidate it for mechanical-dependent applications. The vibrating sample magnetism (VSM) properties showed that GSM nanoparticles are superparamagnetic. In addition, the GSM nanoparticles are applied as methanol electrochemical sensors with high sensitivity even at low concentrations of methanol.