Fabrication of size controllable YVO4 nanoparticles via microemulsion-mediated synthetic process

Narrow size distributed YVO4 nanoparticles with controllable size were successfully fabricated by direct reaction of Na3VO4 and Y(NO3)3 in CTAB microemulsion systems. By the confinement of the microemulsion droplets, with manipulating the pH value of microemulsion media to 7, 8, 9, 10, the size of YVO4 nanoparticles can be accurately controlled as 8.9, 11.1, 13.9 and 47.2 nm, respectively. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscope (TEM) were utilized to characterize the structure, size and shape of the nanoparticles, which indicated tetragonal phase YVO4 nanoparticles displaying ellipsoidal or lozenge-like shape. As pH value is an important factor in our experiments and W value (W=[H2O]/[CTAB]) is the key parameter in the formation of microemulsion droplets, their influences on the YVO4 nanoparticles formation were studied.