Reitveld refinement, structural, optical band gap and low-temperature magnetic characterization of Gd3+ doped spinel cubic CoFe2O4 nanoparticles

Abstract

The current study unravels the structural, optical band gap and magnetic characteristics of rare-earth (RE) gadolinium (Gd) substituted CoGdxFe2-xO4 (x= 0.00 - 0.10, in the interval of 0.02) nanocrystallites synthesized by the sol-gel self-ignition route. The XRD analysis and Rietveld refinement confirmed the existence of a single cubic phase with a crystallite size of ~15-21 nm range, further confirmed by HRTEM results. SEM images confirmed the well-known nano-size morphology for all the samples. The magnetization measurements show a hard ferromagnetic nature for all specimens within the temperature range of 20-300K. Coercivity, remanent, and saturation magnetization monotonically increased with a reduction in temperature from 300K to 20K. UV-Vis absorbance results show that the band gap energy of CoFe2O4 nanoparticles (NPs) decreases with increasing Gd3+ ion doping and have band gap energy values of 2.47, 2.15, 2,02, 2.00, 1.43 and 1.95 eV for x= 0.00, 0.02, 0.04, 0.06, 0.08, 0.10, respectively in CoGdxFe2-xO4 nanoferrites. The present study reveals that structural, optical band gap and magnetic properties could be altered by monitoring the quantity of gadolinium in cobalt nanoferrites. Bangladesh J. Sci. Ind. Res. 57(3), 173-186, 2022