Microstructural, optical, and magnetic properties of vanadium-substituted nickel spinel nanoferrites

Abstract

The current study investigates the impact of vanadium substitution on the structural, magnetic, and optical properties of NiFe2−xVxO4 (x ≤ 0.3) nanoparticles (NPs) produced by the cost-effective sol-gel route. The as-prepared spinel ceramic powders were examined by X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV-visible diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM). The functional groups, spinel phase, and crystal structure were confirmed by XRD and FT-IR, respectively. The crystallites size decreased from 45.24 to 36.56 nm as the doping process increases. The plots of Tauc were drawn to determine optical band gap magnitudes of 1.291, 1.302, and 1.312 eV for x = 0.0, 0.2, and 0.3, respectively. The estimated saturation magnetization is maximum for pristine NiFe2O4 NPs and decreases to minimum for NiFe1.7V0.3O4 NPs. The σ-H hysteresis loops have finite coercivity (between 125 and 169 Oe) and retentivity (between 9.36 and 14.04 emu/g) values. The calculated σr/σs ratios are lower than 0.500, assigning the uniaxial anisotropy for NiFe2−xVxO4. The effective anisotropy constants (Keff) are in the range of 0.824 × 105 and 1.303 × 105 Erg/g. The magnetocrystalline anisotropy field (Ha) values are around 5.0 kOe. The characteristics of hysteresis (σ-H) curves and the order of magnetic data reveal the soft ferrimagnetic feature of as-prepared nanoparticle samples. From Mossbauer analysis, the variations in hyperfine magnetic field, quadrupole splitting, line width, and isomer shift have been evaluated. The distribution of cations showed that the octahedral B sites are occupied by all the ions of V3+. Mossbauer spectra are composed of four Zeeman sextets and one doublet.