Thermal, structural and magnetic properties of zinc-tellurite glasses containing natural ferrite oxide

• Incorporation of natural ferrite oxide into the zinc-tellurite glasses.
• Influence of magnetic ferrite oxide in modifying structure of the glasses.
• Enhancement of thermal stability and magnetic property.

Natural ferrite oxide doped zinc-tellurite glasses are synthesized using the melt quenching technique at 850 °C with chemical composition of (80−x)TeO2·xFe3O4·20ZnO (x=0, 0.5, 1, and 2) in mol%. Precursor nanosized particles of natural magnetite are used as raw material of the ferrite oxide. A differential thermal analyzer, an X-ray diffraction spectroscope and a vibrating sample magnetometer are used to characterize thermal stability, structure, and magnetic properties of the glasses, respectively. The vibrating sample magnetometer reveals the paramagnetic nature of the ferrite oxide with magnetic susceptibility of 4.05×10−5 m3 kg−1. Incorporation of oxide in the glasses affects the thermal stability factor, structure and magnetic properties of the glasses. The stability factor increases from 69 to 102 °C and the glass structure exhibits an amorphous structure. The magnetization curve with a very small hysteresis (Mr=7.0×10−3 emu g−1, Hc=1.7×10−2 T) and high saturation field can be observed on the addition of 2 mol% ferrite oxide. This indicates the existence of ferrimagnetic cluster formation in the glass matrices. Our method is new, economic and may contribute towards the development of magneto-optic devices based on zinc-tellurite glasses.