Temperature sintering dependence of crystalline structure in cobalt ferrite prepared by the sol-gel auto-combustion procedure

Through the addition of nitric acid and citric acid as burners, cobalt ferrite particles have been successfully prepared by the sol-gel automatic combustion method. After drying process at a temperature of 150°C for 1 hour and then followed sintering procedure with a temperature of 500°C, 600°C, and 700°C for 2 hours, samples evaluated the metal-oxide-bond appearance by using far transform infra-red (FTIR) as well as the crystalline structure by using x-ray diffractometer. Typical absorption of FTIR curves around wavenumber (k) of 400 cm-1 and 577 cm-1 indicate the occurrence of the cobalt ferrite. Furthermore, the Rietveld analysis of XRD results showed that the diffraction pattern of cobalt ferrite powder was face-centered-cubic (fcc) structure with Fd-3m space group. The modification of the sintering-temperatures has clarified the change in lattice parameters, atomic positions, and crystallite size for the nanoparticle cobalt ferrite samples.