A combined experimental and theoretical study of the magnetic properties of bulk CoFe2O4

Abstract

This work is devoted to studying experimentally and theoretically the structural and magnetic properties of bulk cobalt spinel ferrite. Solid-state reaction with optimized synthesis conditions is used to prepare CoFe2O4. The crystallization of CoFe2O4 in the FCC structure was confirmed with the X-ray diffraction. The microstructural properties are performed using the scanning electron microscopy. The magnetic properties of the bulk cobalt ferrite were performed experimentally using the superconducting quantum interference device magnetometer (SQUID). Monte Carlo simulation with periodic boundary conditions was used to simulate bulk CoFe2O4 with a large enough size of the system. The obtained magnetization and susceptibility as a function of temperature show that CoFe2O4 exhibits a second-order transition to paramagnetic phase around 725 K. To carry out the maximum energy product, experimental and theoretical magnetic hysteresis loops at room temperature were performed. It is found that the synthesized CoFe2O4 has a high saturation magnetization of about 87.89 emu/g, which is close to the theoretical value of 97.13 emu/g. Lower coercivity–sugariness ratio was found which indicates that bulk cobalt spinel ferrite is a magnetic multi-domain in nature. To evaluate the efficiency of bulk CoFe2O4, the maximum energy product was calculated at room temperature. Our results demonstrate from a microscopic to the macroscopic scale the performance of CoFe2O4 as a promising magnetic material in the new energy technology generation.