Rietveld Refinement and Study of Elastic Properties of Ni0.7Zn0.3DyxFe2-xO4 (0.0 ≤ x 0.03) Ferrite Nano-Structures

Abstract

Dy substituted spinel ferrite nanoparticles of the composition Ni0.7Zn0.3DyxFe2-xO4 (x = 0.0, 0.015, 0.03) were fabricated by using sol-gel method. Structural and elastic properties of Ni-Zn ferrite were tailored by introducing the Dy3+ rare earth ions. Powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Infrared spectroscopy (IR) techniques were employed to investigate the phase purity, absorption bands, and elastic properties of the samples. The crystal structure and cell parameters were refined by using Rietveld refinement done by using Fulprof software. Rietveld refinement infers that the ceramics crystallized in single – phase cubic spinel structure having the space group Fd-3m. A slight increase in lattice parameter is observed due to substitution of Dy3+ ions in Ni-Zn crystal lattice. The vibrational study was achieved by using IR spectroscopy. Two major absorption bands (1 and 2) were observed in the frequency range of 350 to 800 cm-1 which confirms the co-existence of tetrahedral and octahedral sites of spinel structure. IR data was used to evaluate the elastic parameters like stiffness constant, young’s modulus, bulk modulus, rigidity modulus, poisons ratio, and Debye temperature. All the elastic moduli and Debye temperature are found increasing with increasing concentration of Dy3+ ions.