Investigation on Synthesis, Structural and Electrical properties of Zinc Ferrite on Gamma Irradiation

Abstract In the view of magnetic materials application, ferrites are the most attention-grabbing materials therefore in the present work nanocrystalline Zinc ferrite (ZnFe2O4) was prepared by sol-gel auto combustion technique. The synthesis was carried out by using citric acid as a chelating agent and nitrates as oxidant. The preparation of zinc ferrite was done at a sufficiently low temperature of 1000C. To get the good crystallinity and ferrite phase formation of prepared nanopowder was sintered at 5500C for 4 hours and then used for structural and electric investigations. Prepared ZnFe2O4 sample have been irradiated by a gamma-ray source (60Co) to examine the changes that occurred in structural and electrical properties. These changes on gamma irradiation were investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique and two probe technique respectively. From XRD patterns, it was observed that the lattice constant and average crystallite size decrease after gamma irradiation. DC electrical resistivity after gamma irradiation revealed that the charge carrier concentration and activation energy of zinc ferrite increases whereas drift mobility (µ) decreases.