Structural and magnetic properties of CuFe2O4 ferrite nanoparticles synthesized by co-precipitation

Copper ferrite nanoparticles have been synthesized using a co-precipitationmethod. the samples are annealed at different temperatures 600,800 and 1000°c. the structural,morphological and magnetic properties of the nanoparticles arecharacterized by thermogravimetric and differential thermal analysis (tg-dta),x-ray diffraction,scanning electron microscopy and mössbauer spectrometry. the annealing temperature effect on the grain size,the lattice parameter,the degree of inversion,the cationic distributionis studied. tg-dta measurements show a crystallization temperature of about 520°c. the x-ray diffraction measurements show that the average grain size increases from 10 to 90 nm when the annealing temperature ranges from 600 to 1000°c. for its part,scanning electron microscopy shows that the particles have spherical shapes but not homogeneous sizes. mössbauer spectra recorded at room temperature show a paramagnetic behavior of iron atoms for the un-annealed sample,while for the samples annealed at 600,800 and 1000°c,the iron atoms are magnetic and the inversion parameter x ranging from 0.77 to 1.