Ultrafine grained high density manganese zinc ferrite produced using polyol process assisted by Spark Plasma Sintering

We report the synthesis of Mn-Zn ferrite (MZFO) nanoparticles (NPs) by the polyol process and their consolidation by Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS) technique at relatively low temperature and short time, namely 500 °C for 10 min. NPs were obtained as perfectly epitaxied aggregated nanoclusters forming a kind of spherical pseudo-single-crystals of about 40 nm in size. The results on NPs consolidation by SPS underlined the importance of this clustering on the grain growth mechanism. Grain growth proceeds by coalescing nanocrystalline aggregates into single grain of almost the same average size, thus leading to a high density ceramic. Due to magnetic exchange interactions between grains, the produced ceramic does not exhibit thermal relaxation whereas their precursor polyol-made NPs are superparamagnetic.