Magnetic and Optical Study of Zinc Ferrite Produced by the Ceramic Method

A solid–solid reaction took place at 1000 °C during 4 h, using a mixture of pure iron oxideIron oxideFe2O3 and pure zinc oxide—ZnO in order to synthesize zinc ferrite—ZFZinc ferrite-ZF' of different compositions: (S1) Fe2O3/ZnO:3/2, (S2) Fe2O3/ZnO:1/1, (S3) Fe2O3/ZnO:4/1, and (S4) Fe2O3/ZnO:2/1. Each of these mixtures were milled during 24 h before the thermic treatment was carried out. S1, S2, S3, and S4 samples were become to M1, M2, M3, and M4 samples, respectively, which after that were thermally characterized using DSC, DTA, and TG techniques. In sequence the ZF produced were examined using XRD, optical, and magnetic techniques, SEM and TEM. XRD analysis shows up contains of equimolar ZF: M3 (73.20%), M4 (28.00%), and M2 (2.10%) as non-stoichiometric phases of ZF: 31.80% of Zn0.95Fe1.78O3.71 and 30.40% of Zn1.08Fe1.92O4 in M4; Zn0.97Fe2.02O4 in M3 and 35.30% of Zn0.54Fe2.46O4 in M1. Previous studies of magnetic characterizationMagnetic characterization observed a little hysteresis of this equimolar ZF. The results of estimation of the bandgap energy (Eg) via the manipulation of the Kubelka–Munk theory allowed to determine that the samples M1, M2, M3, and M4 are considered semiconductors (3.66 and 3.76 eV).