Study of structure and magnetic properties of Ni–Zn ferrite nano-particles synthesized via co-precipitation and reverse micro-emulsion technique

Nano-crystalline Ni–Zn ferrites were synthesized by chemical co-precipitation and reverse micro-emulsion technique with an average crystallite size of 11 and 6 nm, respectively. The reverse micro-emulsion method has been found to be more appropriate for nano-ferrite synthesis as the produced particles are monodisperse and highly crystalline. Zero-field cooled and field cooled magnetization study under different magnetic fields and magnetic hysteresis loops at different temperatures have been performed. The non-saturated M–H loops, absence of hysteresis, and coercivity at room temperature are indicative of the presence of super paramagnetic and single-domain nano-particles for both the materials. In sample ‘a’, the blocking temperature (TB) has been observed to decrease from 255 to 120 K on increasing the magnetic field from 50 to 1,000 Oe, which can be attributed to the reduction of magneto crystalline anisotropy constant. The MS and coercivity were found to be higher for sample ‘a’ as compared with sample ‘b’ since surface effects are neglected on increasing the crystallite size.