Investigation of various magnetic features of spinel type cobalt ferrite (CoFe2O4) nanoparticles tuned by annealing temperature

Cobalt ferrite (CoFe2O4) nanoparticles synthesized by chemical co-precipitation method were studied to see the effect of annealing temperatures on the structural parameters and magnetic properties of the sample. X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscope (TEM) and SAD pattern demonstrated that single face (fcc) spinel structure of CoFe2O4 has been formed showing particles in completely crystalline state which was further confirmed by the lattice parameter and the unmixed hkl values. The particle size is in the range of about 5-10 nm depending on the annealing temperature from 200°C to 400°C. The grain growth occurred monotonically with the increase of annealing temperature. The magnetic properties demonstrated a strong dependence on particle size. The saturation magnetization Ms, remanent ratio Mr/Ms and coercivity Hc increased with the increase of particle size. The hysteresis curves for samples of different grain size showed the ferrimagnetic behavior which is completely analogous to the slow relaxation sextet peaks of Mössbauer spectroscopy. Other parameters such as chemical shift, quadruple splitting and hyperfine field and site occupancy of Fe3+ were determined by Mössbauer spectroscopy. Ferrimagnetic to superparamagnetic transition temperature known as blocking temperature TB was determined from the temperature dependent magnetization curves. With the increase of grain size, Blocking temperature also increases. Maximum entropy changes due to magnetic phase transition were also observed for mentioned annealing temperatures in the context of Magnetocaloric effect.