A study of the mechanism of microwave-assisted ball milling preparing ZnFe2O4

In this paper, well dispersed ZnFe2O4 nano-particles with high magnetization saturation of 82.23 emu/g were first synthesized by microwave assisted ball milling and then the influences of pre-treatments and microwave powers to the progress were studied. It was found that under the both function of crack effect induced by ball milling and rotary motion induced by microwave the synthesized ferrtie nano-particles were well dispersed that is much different from the powders synthesized by normal high energy ball milling. The pre-treatment of ball milling can only enhance the reaction rate in the first several hours but the pre-irradiation of microwave can enhance the hole reaction rate. Further more, it was also been found that with increasing the microwave power, the more raw materials will converted into zinc ferrite in the first 5 h. 5 h latter the microwave power of 720 W is high enough for the coupling effect of microwave and ball milling with stirrer rotation speed of 256 rpm.