Investigation of structural, electrical and magnetic properties of nickel substituted Co–Zn nanoferrites

A series of nickel-substituted cobalt–zinc ferrite nanoparticles were synthesized via a citrate precursor technique. The Ni ion substitution effect was investigated on the various morphological, structural, electrical, magnetic and dielectric properties. The structural behavior examined using X-ray diffraction revealed the formation of single-phase cubic structure with no impurity phase, where, crystallite size varied between 36.79 and 40.57 nm. The lattice parameter values increased from 8.417 to 8.449 Å. The material is found to have tensile strain as depicted by W–H graphs where its value varied between 0.0027 and 0.0032. The average grain size of ~ 100 nm was observed by SEM micrographs. The synthesized nanoferrite particles were found to have efficient dielectric parameter values at 1 MHz frequency. The real and imaginary parts of the dielectric constant were found to be in the range from 3.06 to 13.77 and 0.23 to 3.6, respectively. The loss tangent was recorded as very low with values ranging from 0.075 to 0.26 at 1 MHz frequency for the nickel-substituted ferrite nanoparticles. The dc resistivity was calculated in the range 7.68 × 106–2.28 × 108 Ω-cm for the prepared samples. The Vibrating Sample Magnetometer analysis showed that the saturation magnetization decreased from 54.95 to 41.18 emu/g, whereas the coercivity value varied between 155.084 and 285.490 Oe. From all these observations, these materials are found to be suitable for use in high-frequency applications.