Effect of rare earth substitution in cobalt ferrite bulk materials

• Substitution by a large number of rare earth elements was investigated.
• First reported results on magnetostriction measurements of RE doped cobalt ferrite.
• The doped samples presented an increased porosity and a decreased grain size.
• Increased magnetostrctive response was observed for several doped samples.

The study was focused on the influence of small amounts of rare earth (RE=La, Ce, Sm, Gd, Dy, Ho, Er, Yb) addition on the microstructure, phase content and magnetic properties of cobalt ferrite bulk materials. The X-Ray diffraction measurements confirmed the formation of the spinel structure but also the presence of secondary phases of RE oxides or orthoferrite in small percentages (up to 3%). Density measurements obtained by Archimedes method revealed a ~1 g cm−3 decrease for the RE doped cobalt ferrite samples compared with stoichiometric one. Both the Mössbauer and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrocopy analysis results confirmed the formation of the spinel phase. The saturation magnetization and coercive field values of the doped samples obtained by Vibrating Sample Magnetometry were close to those of the pure cobalt ferrite. For magnetostrictive property studies the samples were analyzed using the strain gauge method. Higher maximum magnetostriction coefficients were found for the Ho, Ce, Sm and Yb doped cobalt ferrite bulk materials as related to the stoichiometric CoFe2O4 sample. Moreover, improved strain derivative was observed for these samples but at higher magnetic fields due to the low increase of the coercive field values for doped samples.