Synthesis of CoFe2O4/BaTiO3 core-shell composite nanoparticles

It is important to prepare ideal 0-3 type magnetoelectric nanocomposites for promoting the multiferroic technological applications; however, the processing technology has become a big challenge. The key point to achieve the synthesis of 0-3 type magnetoelectric composites is the creation of ferromagnetic/ferroelectric composite nanoparticles with core-shell structure. In this work, core-shell structured CoFe2O4/BaTiO3 nanoparticles were synthesized in two steps. CoFe2O4 nanoparticles were firstly prepared through a polyacrylamide gel method, and then were coated with BaTiO3 layers using the same gel route. It is demonstrated that the as-prepared composite particles are an evident core-shell structure, where the core and the shell are determined to be CoFe2O4 and BaTiO3, respectively. The composite particles are nearly spherical in shape with a narrow particle size distribution. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.