Evaluation of Biofield Treatment on Physical, Atomic and Structural Characteristics of Manganese (II, III) Oxide

What is it about?

In Mn3O4, the crystal structure, dislocation density, particle size and spin of the electrons plays crucial role in modulating its magnetic properties. Present study investigates impact of Biofield treatment on physical and atomic properties of Mn3O4. X-ray diffraction revealed the significant effect of biofield on lattice parameter, unit cell volume, molecular weight, crystallite sizes and densities of treated Mn3O4. XRD analysis confirmed that crystallinity was enhanced and dislocation density was effectively reduced by 80%. FTIR spectroscopic analysis revealed that Mn-O bond strength was significantly altered by biofield treatment. Electronic spin resonance analysis showed higher g-factor of electron in treated Mn3O4 as compared to control, along with altered spin-spin atomic interaction of Mn with other mixed valance states. Additionally, ESR study affirmed higher magnetization behaviour of the treated Mn3O4. The results demonstrated that treated Mn3O4 ceramic could be used as an excellent material for fabrication of novel magnetic data storage devices.

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Why is it important?

Transition metal oxides (TMOs) constitute most interesting classes of solids, which exhibits different varieties of structures and properties [1]. Manganese (II, III) oxides (Mn3O4) is an excellent example of TMOs which gained significant attention among researchers due to its wide range of applications in magnetic materials, catalysis, ion exchange, magnetic data storage, super capacitors, molecular adsorption and ferrite materials [2-8]. Mn3O4 shows a paramagnetic behaviour at room temperature and ferromagnetic below 41-43K. The magnetic properties of Mn3O4 strongly depend on dislocations, vacancies, crystallite sizes, and lattice parameters. This affirms that crystal structure and its properties play an exclusive role in controlling magnetic strength in Mn3O4 that can be exploited in magnetic data storage applications. Mn3O4 exists as normal spinal crystal structure, in which Mn+2 occupy a tetrahedral position and Mn+3 at octahedral positions [3,4]. Recently, magnetism and electrochemical properties in Mn3O4 nanoparticles are controlled by modulating the crystal structure by various processes such as annealing at high temperature [9], doping [10], hydrothermal [11], ultrasonic bath [12] and co-precipitation etc. Physical and chemical properties like particle size, surface area of Mn3O4 nanoparticles are controlled by various methods including vapor phase growth [13], thermal decomposition, chemical liquid precipitation and solvothermal [14,15]. Nevertheless each technique has their own advantages but there are certain drawbacks which limit their applicability at commercial level, such as vapour deposition method required high pressure and temperature to produce highly crystalline powder whereas thermal decomposition method requires specialized surfactants which may cause impurities in the product [16]. It has been already reported that magnetic behaviour can be improved by increasing the crystalinity and particle size volume [9,16]. Hence in order to develop highly crystalline Mn3O4 nanoparticles and to improve its applicability at commercial level a simple and cost effective method should be designed. Biofield treatment is an excellent and cost effective approach which was recently used to modulate the, atomic structure [17,18] and density [19-21] molecular weight [22,23] of the bound atom thereby it facilitates the conversion of energy into mass and vice versa. Mr Trivedi is known for utilizing his biofield, referred herein as biofield treatment, for conducting experiments in various sectors such as material science [17-24], agriculture [25-29] and microbiology [30-32], which are already reported elsewhere. Biofield treatment had significantly changed the physical, atomic and thermal properties in transition metals [17,18,20], carbon allotropes [19] and metal oxide ceramics [21,23] such as particle size was decreased by 71% in zirconium oxide [23] and crystallite size was increased by 66% in Vanadium Pentoxide (V2O5) [21]. Hence in present research investigation, Mn3O4 powder was exposed to Mr. Trivedi’s biofield in order to improve its physical, structural, and magnetic properties. The treated Mn3O4 samples were characterized by FT-IR, XRD, ESR, Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) analysis and particle size analysis.

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