The study of the structural, optical and morphological properties of pure and zinc doped cobalt ferrite nanoparticles grown using sol-gel method

Abstract

In this work pure and zinc doped Cobalt ferrite nano particles was successfully synthesized using sol-gel method. The Precursors that were used for synthesis are metal nitrate salts such as ferric nitrate, Cobalt nitrate, Zinc nitrate and Citric acid which was used as chelating agent. The ammonium solution was added to control the PH of the solution. The synthesized cobalt Zinc ferrite nano particles was characterized using different instruments. The crystal structure of the synthesized sample characterized using XRD. From XRD data the lattice constant, crystal size of the samples are increased with increasing of zinc content. The optical properties of the synthesized samples was identified using UV-Vis spectroscope. The Uv-Vis data confirms that Cobalt ferrite and Zinc cobalt ferrite nanomaterials synthesized active in visible region. The energy band gap increase from 1.655eV to 2.30eV with increasing zinc concentration due to the non-magnetic properties of zinc atom. The crystal structure and the crystal morphology of the synthesized samples were identified by using scanning electron microscope (SEM). The SEM data reveal that the synthesized samples are almost spherical in shape and it confirms that the prepared samples are in the range of nano level.