Impact of Al doping on structural and Magnetic Properties of Co-Ferrite

Nanocrystaslline Al doped cobalt ferrite CoAlyFe2-yO4 (y = 0.5, 1.5) powders have been synthesized by microwave assisted solgel auto combustion method and characterised using X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy(TEM) and vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM). The XRD revealed that the powders obtained are single phase with spinel structure and crystallises to Fd3m space group. The calculated grain size from XRD data have been verified using TEM. TEM photograph shows that powder consists of manometer sized grains. It was observed that as Al3+ content increases the grain size and lattice constant decreases which attributed towards the influence of non-magnetic Al3+ concentration on the grain size. The magnetic properties of the synthesized samples is characterised by using VSM. The saturation magnetisation (Ms), coercivity (Hc) were found to decreases with increases of aluminium content which is due to nonmagnetic Al3+ ion and weakened interaction between sub lattices. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.