Preparation and characterization of the cobalt ferrite nano-particles by reverse coprecipitation

•Cobalt ferrite nano-particles were synthesized by reverse precipitation method.•The synthesis conditions were investigated in detail.•The optimum sample presents high saturation magnetization and proper coercivity.•The optimum sample was approximately spherical shape.

In this paper, cobalt ferrite nano-particles were rapidly prepared using a reverse coprecipitation method. The effects of pH value, aging time, aging temperature and calcination temperature were studied by VSM, XRD and TEM. The results presented that the conditions to obtain the cobalt ferrite nano-particles with a perfect cubic spinel ferrite type structure are the pH value of 12.00, aging time of 60 min, aging temperature of 92 °C and calcination temperature of 800 °C. The crystallite size of cobalt ferrite increased with increasing the aging and calcination temperature. The saturation magnetization of cobalt ferrite increased with increasing the aging and calcination temperature. The VSM analysis demonstrated that the optimum sample has a high saturation magnetization and proper coercivity, 72.95 emu/g and 717 Oe, respectively. Furthermore, the particle size estimated from the TEM was seen to be larger than that observed from the XRD analysis.