Phys Rev B 1996, 54:11169–11186.CrossRef 20. Perdew JP, Chevary JA, Vosko SH, Jackson KA, Pederson MR, Singh DJ, Fiolhais C: Atoms, molecules, solids, and surfaces: applications of the generalized gradient approximation for exchange and correlation. Phys Rev B 1992, 46:6671–6687.CrossRef 21. Vanderbilt D: Soft self-consistent pseudopotentials in a generalized

eigenvalue formalism. Phys Rev B 1990, click here 41:7892–7895.CrossRef Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Authors’ contributions CC Selleckchem Selisistat carried out the computation and wrote the manuscript. JHZ, GFD, HZS, and BYN provided technical assistance in computation. XJN, LZ, and JZ conceived and supervised the computation and discussed the results. CC and JZ co-wrote the manuscript. learn more All authors read and approved the final manuscript.”
“Background The more stable phases in iron oxides are hematite and magnetite. Hematite can be used in a lot of applications, such as sensors [1], water photooxidation [2], drug delivery [3], lithium ion battery [4], pigmentation [5], solar cell [6], etc., and magnetite can be utilized in biomedicine [7–11], magnetic devices [12],

etc. Therefore, studies about the nano/microstructures of iron oxides and their properties, which are related to the intrinsic structure and crystal shapes, have been intensively engaged, especially for hematite and magnetite. The bandgap of hematite is 2.0 to 2.2 eV which makes it useful in applications that involve visible light absorption [13, 14]. Magnetite has unique electric and magnetic properties because its intrinsic crystal structure allows electrons to be transferred between Fe2+ and Fe3+ in

the octahedral sites [15]. Many researches have demonstrated the capability of using chemical syntheses to control particle morphologies of iron oxide by surfactants [16–18]. Morphologies like wires [19], rods [20], tubes [21], rings [22], disks [23], cubes [24], spheres [25], hexagonal plates of α-Fe2O3 [26, 27], and polyhedral particles of Fe3O4 [28, 29] have been synthesized successfully. Several robust methods have been Florfenicol developed for phase transformation of iron oxides. α-Fe2O3 can be transformed to Fe3O4 at high temperature under a reducing ambient, such as hydrogen ambient [30, 31]. Yanagisawa and Yamasaki also showed that by controlling the mineralizer solutions, temperatures, and partial pressures of hydrogen in a hydrothermal system, phase transformation from α-Fe2O3 to Fe3O4 particles can be achieved [32]. The result indicated that high temperature and high pressure of hydrogen can accelerate the reduction reaction. Phase transition of iron oxides can also take place by hydrothermal reaction with a reducing agent [33, 34].