Preparation of hexagonal iron flakes with a hexagonal structure on the sublayer of copper oxides

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method to synthesize hexagonal iron flakes with a close-packed structure on copper oxide sublayers, revealing how sublayer features influence iron grain size and structure, supported by experimental and computational analysis.

Contribution

It presents a novel fabrication process for hexagonal iron flakes on copper oxide layers, combining sputtering, annealing, and DFT calculations to understand structural formation.

Findings

Hexagonal iron flakes with hcp structure were successfully prepared.

The size and structure of iron grains depend on the sublayer features.

The magnetic properties and DFT calculations confirm the hexagonal structure.

Abstract

This study presented a novel method to prepare hexagonal iron flakes with hexagonal close-packed structures (hcp) on the copper oxide sublayers. Also, it demonstrated that the size and structure of iron grains are functions of sublayer features. The sublayer was prepared by sputtering copper on the glass substrate and annealing it. As the annealing temperature of the copper sublayer increased, the oxygen percentage increased and copper oxide rods were formed. Hexagonal iron flakes were formed after sputtering iron on this sublayer. The XRD analysis showed that these hexagonal flakes have a close-packed hexagonal structure. This finding was further confirmed by the magnetic properties of the samples and by density functional theory (DFT) calculations.