Dextrose Assisted Sol-Gel Synthesis and Evaluation of Structural Parameters of Li_0.5Fe_2.5O₄Nanoparticles for Microwave Device Application

Abstract

The spinel ferrite nanoparticles are of great importance to the scientist and technologist. Lithium ferrite is one of the best spinel ferrite used in many technological applications. In the present communication, we report the synthesis of lithium ferrite (Li0.5Fe2.5O4) using sol-gel autocombustion method. Dextrose was used as a chelating agent in the synthesis and the metal nitrates to dextrose ratio was taken as 1:4. The as prepared powder of lithium ferrite was annealed at 550 °C for 4h. A non destructive X-ray diffraction technique was employed to study the phase evolution and crystal structure. The X-ray diffraction pattern was analysed and result suggest that the prepared nanoparticles of lithium ferrite possess single phase cubic structure. No extra peak other than the cubic phase was seen in the XRD pattern. The crystallite size was estimated using Debye Scherrer formula taking into consideration the most intense peak (311) present in the XRD pattern. The full width at half maxima (FWHM) was obtained through (311) plane. The crystallite size was obtained to be 23 nm, indicating the nanocrystalline nature of the prepared samples. The unit cell parameters that is lattice constant obtain from XRD data found to be in good agreement with the reported value. The other structural parameters like hopping length, tetrahedral radius, octahedral radius etc were determined their dependence with lattice constant is discussed in this work.