A comparative study on the physico–chemical properties of sol–gel electrospun cobalt oxide nanofibres from two different polymeric binders

Abstract

In this study, two different sacrificial polymeric binders, namely poly(2-ethyl-2-oxazoline) (PEtOx) and poly(styrene-co-acrylonitrile) (SAN) along with cobalt acetate tetrahydrate (CATH), as the metal oxide precursor, were used for the fabrication of Co₃O₄ nanofibres through sol–gel electrospinning. It was observed that the degradation behaviour and physical properties of SAN and PEtOx influenced the structure, morphology and spectral properties of Co₃O₄ nanofibres, as the properties of the nanofibres obtained from the aforementioned systems were compared with each other. The grain size, shape and the activation energies for grain growth of Co₃O₄ nanofibres obtained from these two polymeric systems were different. This difference in grain size and shape caused a difference in the optical band gap energies and the magnetic properties of the Co₃O₄ nanofibres. This study reveals that one can tailor the characteristics of cobalt oxide nanofibres by an appropriate selection of polymeric binders for sol–gel electrospinning.