Structural and Magnetic Studies of Zinc Substituted Cobalt Ferrite Nanoparticles prepared by Sol–Gel Technique

Abstract

All Magnetic nanoparticles are newly explored materials due to its large surface to volume ratio, smaller grain size, quantum confinement effect, large uni-axial anisotropy and superparamagnetism. In the present study, Zinc substituted cobalt ferrite nanoparticles are prepared by sol-gel auto-combustion method with copper concentration varies from 0.0 to 0.0. Structural studies are taken by XRD, it was confirmed that the sample has pure cubic spinel phase structure and the crystallite size decreases from 25nm to 15nm as the Zn content increases. Raman spectroscopy confirming the spinel structure and in the case of Co1-xZnxFe2O4, the Raman bands show a shoulder-like feature at the lower wavenumber which are Raman active bands in Fe3O4 all the tetrahedral and octahedral sites are occupied by Fe ions. From FTIR Analysis, the peak observed at 433 cm−1 and around 580 cm−1 it confirms the metal oxygen vibration at octahedral and tetrahedral site. Morphological analysis shows that the spherical sized particles with pores due to the evolution of gases during the annealing process at higher temperature. The magnetic studies reveals that as the ratio of metal nitrates increases, the coercivity and remanence decreases following a hysteresis path. By the above characterization technique we were successfully able to confirm the substitution of Zinc in the octahedral sites of cobalt ferrite.