Magnetic and Structural Investigations of Nanocrystalline Cobalt-Ferrite

Cobalt ferrite is an important magnetic material due to their large magneto-crystalline anisotropy, high cohercivity, moderate saturation magnetization and chemical stability.In this study, cobalt ferrites Nanoparticles have been synthesized by the co-precipitation method and a new microemulsion route. We examined the cation occupancy in the spinel structure based on the “Rietveld with energies” method. The Xray measurements revealed the production of a broad single ferrite cubic phase with the average particle sizes of about 12 nm and 7nm, for co-precipitation and micro-emulsion methods, respectively. The FTIR measurements between 400 and 4000 cm-1 confirmed the intrinsic cation vibrations of the spinelstructure for the two methods. Furthermore, the Vibrating Sample Magnetometer (VSM) was carried out at room temperature to study the structural and magnetic properties. The results revealed that by changing the method from co-precipitation to the reverse micelle the material exhibits a softer magnetic behavior in such a way that both saturation magnetization and coercivity decrease from 58 to 29 emu/g and from 286 to 25 Oe, respectively.