Morphological Investigation and Fractal Properties of Realgar Nanoparticles

• Main Authors: Amir Lashgari, Shahriar Ghamami, Zahra Bahrami, Farzaneh Shomossi, Guillermo Salgado-Morán, Daniel Glossman-Mitnik
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hindawi Limited 2015-01-01
• Series: Journal of Nanomaterials
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/130698

Some arsenic compounds can show extraordinary polymorphism. Realgar (As4S4) is among several minerals with various crystal forms and is one of the most important sources of arsenic for pharmaceutical use. Currently, realgar is used as an arsenic source in many industries, such as weaponry, publishing, textiles, cosmetics, and health products. In this paper, we used and reported new methods for the purification, nanonization, and structural morphological investigations of As4S4 by using planetary ball mills process for nanonization of the compound. The product was characterized using X-ray powder diffraction analysis, Fourier transform infrared spectrometry spectra, and field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) imaging. We investigated the morphological properties of FESEM-imaged realgar nanoparticles by an image-processing technique that calculates fractal dimensions using values on a computer with MATLAB software. We applied the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software for statistics data extracted from the FESEM image and obtained the statistics results of the fractal dimension and histogram plot for the FESEM image.