Effects of Zinc Content on the Magnetic Properties of Ni-Zn Ferrite/Epoxy Composites

Abstract

Magnetic composites, especially ferrite composites, are of great interest for embedded inductor applications. In this paper, the Ni-Zn ferrite particles (Ni1-xZnxFe2O4, x=0.2～0.8) with different zinc contents were synthesized via chemical coprecipitation method followed by modification with γ-glycidoxypropyl trimethoxysilane (KH-560). The particles were investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM). The results show that the prepared Ni1-xZnxFe2O4(x=0.2～0.7) have good spinel structures, higher saturation magnetization (35.18～77.69 emu/g) and smaller hysteresis hoops, while Ni0.2Zn0.8Fe2O4 grains exhibit some paramagnetic behaviors, such as almost zero hysteresis and non-saturated magnetization. Next Ni1-xZnxFe2O4 magnetic/epoxy composites with different volume fraction of ferrite were prepared and their magnetic performances at high frequencies were characterized by an Agilent E4991A impedance analyzer (USA). It is found that with zinc content in Ni1-xZnxFe2O4 increasing from 0.2 to 0.7, the real part of the complex permeability (μ′) of these composites increase first and then decrease with the frequency increasing gradually from 10 MHz to 1 GHz. Of all, the epoxy composites with filler of Ni0.6Zn0.4Fe2O4 or Ni0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4 ferrite show good frequency stability, and the composites including Ni0.4Zn0.6Fe2O4 ferrite have the highest permeability, and the maximal value at the frequency of 100 MHz is 5.55 when the volume faction is 42.75%. The imaginary part of the complex permeability (μ′′) of all magnetic composites is low For the Ni0.2Zn0.8Fe2O4/epoxy composites, they have very low real permeability (μ′～1) and imaginary permeability (μ″≤0.2).