Structural and Magnetic Properties Study of Fe2O3/NiO/Ni2FeO4 Nanocomposites

Abstract

In the current work, the nanocomposites that consist chiefly of three components—α-Fe2O3, NiO and Ni2FeO4, in two different ratios 2:2:1 (FNN-221) and 2:1:1 (FNN-211), respectively—were produced. The synthesis was done in two steps by following the chemical co-precipitation and mechanical ball-milling route. The presence of individual phase was identified from the XRD data without the detection of any additional impurities. The phase fraction of each component estimated from the profile fitting of XRD patterns were found to be 41.2%, 39.7%, 19.1% in FNN-221 sample and 49.5%, 26.4%, 24.1% for FNN-211 sample, respectively, which were consistent with the experimental values. The total magnetization at 300 K was obtained to be 13.41 emu/g and 10.95 emu/g for FNN-221 and FNN-211 samples, respectively. In FNN-211 compound the zero field coercivity (HC) expanded towards the higher field values thereby signifying the exchange bias behavior. Furthermore, the exchange bias field (Hex) for FNN-211 was obtained as 35.1 Oe.