Effects of Fe Ion Vacancy on Magnetic Properties of NiFe2O4 Ferrite Nanoparticles.

The effects of Fe ion vacancy on structural and magnetic properties of NiFeO4 nanoparticles are investigated using X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared, morphological, and magnetic measurements. The introduction of Fe ion vacancy leads to the increase of the lattice parameter and decrease of the particle size. Moreover, vibrating sample magnetometer measurement results revealed that the values of the magnetization decreased and that coercivity had no regular behavior with increasing Fe ion vacancy content. These behaviors could be explained by considering cation distribution in the spinel structure. The estimated cation distribution results show that the Fe ion vacancy mostly occurred at the B sites which is in good agreement with the theoretical calculations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]