Sintering effect on structural, magnetic and optical properties of Ni0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4 ferrite nano particles

Ni0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4 nano ferrite particles have been prepared by mechanical alloying via high energy ball milling and sintered at different temperatures from 700 °C to 1000 °C. Spinel structure is confirmed from the analysis of XRD data. Rietveld refinement method is employed to refine the XRD powder data and the structural parameters are calculated from the refinement. Small amount of hematite phase is found in all samples. The SEM, EDAX and XRF analysis reveals respectively the morphology, stoichiometric composition and purity of the powder samples. Using Maximum Entropy Method (MEM) the values of the bond strength between various sites interactions in ferrites are evaluated and compared with theoretical predictions of strengthening/weakening of various sites interactions from the values of interionic distances and interionic bond angles. Ferromagnetic nature of the samples is confirmed from the vibrating sample magnetometer study. The obtained low saturation magnetization values are attributed to presence of second phase. The optical band gap energy of the samples was determined by using UV-VIS techniques.