Effect of Gd3+ doping on magnetic, electric and dielectric properties of MgGdxFe2-xO4 ferrites processed by solid state reaction technique

MgGdxFe2-xO4 (x = 0.0, 0.05, 0.1 and 0.15) ferrites, with improved dc resistivity, initial permeability, saturation magnetization, and extremely low relative loss factor, have been synthesized by solid state reaction technique. The microstructures, electric, dielectric and magnetic properties have been investigated by means of X-ray diffraction, Keithley 2611 system, impedance analyzer and VSM respectively. The addition of Gadolinium in Mg ferrite has been shown to play a crucial role in enhancing the electric, dielectric and magnetic properties. The dc resistivity is increased by two orders of magnitude as compared to Mg ferrite. Saturation magnetization has been increased by two times and remnant magnetization has been increased by more than three times due to the doping of Gd3+ ions in Mg ferrite. The relative loss factor was found to have very low values and is of the order of 10(-4)-10(-5) in the frequency range 0.1-30 MHz. The variations of electric, dielectric and magnetic properties of the samples have been studied as a function of frequency and Gd3+ ions concentration measured at room temperature. High resistivity and improved magnetic properties can be correlated with better compositional stoichiometry and the replacement of Fe3+ ions by Gd3+ ions. The mechanisms responsible to these results have been discussed in this paper. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.