A facile one-pot solvothermal synthesis of CoFe2O4/RGO and its excellent catalytic activity on thermal decomposition of ammonium perchlorate

Abstract

CoFe₂O₄/RGO hybrids have been successfully fabricated via a facile one-pot solvothermal method, which were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). During this process, graphene oxide was reduced to graphene (RGO) and CoFe₂O₄ nanoparticles were deposited on the RGO. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) revealed that the average size of CoFe₂O₄/RGO hybrids was 120 nm, which was smaller than that of bare CoFe₂O₄, implying that RGO could effectively prevent CoFe₂O₄ nanoparticles from aggregating. To investigate the catalytic activity of the as-synthesized CoFe₂O₄ particles and CoFe₂O₄/RGO hybrids, the thermal decomposition of ammonium perchlorate (AP) was characterized by differential thermal analyser (DTA). Both of the two exothermic processes were merged into a sole exothermic process with the addition of bare CoFe₂O₄ and CoFe₂O₄/RGO hybrids, though there was no change in the position of the phase transition temperature of AP. Moreover, the catalytic activity of CoFe₂O₄/RGO hybrids is higher than that of bare CoFe₂O₄, due to the large surface area and enhanced properties of RGO in the hybrids. The temperature programmed reduction (TPR) measurements showed that the reduction temperature of CoFe₂O₄/RGO decreased by 55 °C compared with bare CoFe₂O₄, which further confirmed the higher catalytic activity of CoFe₂O₄/RGO of than that of CoFe₂O₄ nanocomposites. Hence, CoFe₂O₄/RGO hybrids could be a promising additive in modifying the burning behaviour of AP-based composite propellant.