Anyway, the idea is that they were able to create iron oxide that looks like it does in the image above. Creepy looking. They took iron nitrate, mixed it in with a big block copolymer and refluxed it. They have an idea of how it worked, the scheme is below, but this definitely seems like the kind of thing you just stumble upon when you're trying for something else. It's nice when science works out like that sometimes.
When they dipped it in solutions of chromium, it adsorbed onto the surface due to ion-exchange, and the nanoworms work better than a film of iron oxide because of the higher surface area. They got a higher removing capacity when they did the reflux at lower temperatures. This is seemingly because the nanoworms aggregate and anneal with higher temperatures, which would like to bigger worms (nanonightcrawlers?) and less surface area.
Worms: good for your compost, bad for your computer, but now good for your water purification.
WAN, L., SHI, K., TIAN, X., FU, H. (2008). Facile synthesis of iron oxide with wormlike morphology and their application in water treatment. Journal of Solid State Chemistry, 181(4), 735-740. DOI: 10.1016/j.jssc.2008.01.019
Godspeed.
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