Structural and electrical properties of copper ferrite (CuFe2O4) NPs

Spinel ferrites are the important class of soft magnetic material composed of iron oxide and metal oxide as their main compound. Copper ferrite (CuFe 2 O 4 ) is one such spinel ferrite with great potential technological applications. It is well-known about ‘Jahn-Teller distortion’ that the copper ferro-spinel are at room temperature has a co-operative distortion to the tetragonal site-symmetry which depends only upon the copper ion distribution. The structural and electrical properties of Copper ferrite were investigated by X-ray diffraction and DC-resistivity studies. The room temperature XRD data revealed that the formation of tetragonal structure of (CuFe 2 O 4 ) NPs. The crystallite size (t) nm was obtained from Debye-Sherrer’s formula indicated that the (CuFe 2 O 4 ) NPs shows nanocrystalline nature with crystallite size 14 nm. The lattice constant (a) was found to be in the reported range (∼8.380 Ǻ). The DC-resistivity parameters were drawn from the two point probe device. An activation energy AE of the copper ferrite nanoparticles was found to be 0.01 eV.