Investigation effect of Lu-substitution on structural, morphological, magnetic, and dielectric properties of BaM hexaferrite synthesized using a co-precipitation method

Abstract

In this paper, we synthesized Lu-substituted M-type barium ferrites (BaLuxFe12-xO19, x = 0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8) by chemical co-precipitation using a non-stoichiometric ratio of raw materials. We investigated their structure, XPS, and EDX spectra, morphology, and magnetic and dielectric properties. The XRD patterns showed that the diffraction peaks shifted toward a lower angle and the lattice constant ratio (c/a) was less than 3.98, which was within the allowable range of magneto-plumbite structure. XPS and EDX spectra confirmed the presence of O, Fe, Ba, and Lu elements in the samples. SEM images revealed that the ceramic samples sintered at 1330 °C had a regular and obvious hexagonal structure. Lu substitution promoted grain growth, with an average grain size increase of 163% and a maximum grain size of 21.77 µm. Hysteresis loops indicated the formation of a multi-domain structure in the samples. The coercivity decreased from 2035.82 Oe to 574.84 Oe and the saturation magnetization decreased as well but still exceeded 58 emu/g. The dielectric constants of all the samples were in the order of 103 to 104 and the substitution of Lu significantly increased it to about 16k. The tangent loss could be maintained below 0.5, with a minimum of approximately 0.1. The Lu-substitution barium ferrites with high saturation magnetization, low coercivity, high dielectric constant, and low tangent loss coexistence may be a potential candidate for application in low-frequency wireless communication with miniaturization and multifunction.