A facile approach to enhance the high temperature stability of magnetite nanoparticles with improved magnetic property

We study the effect of Zn2+ doping on crystal structure, magnetic properties, blocking and Curie temperatures, and the high temperature phase stability of magnetite nanoparticles under air and vacuum annealing. The Zn2+ doped nanoparticles (ZnxFe3-xO4 with x = 0, 0.2, 0.4, and 0.6) are prepared by simple co-precipitation technique and are characterized by high temperature X-ray powder diffraction (HTXRD), vibrating sample magnetometer, small angle X-ray scattering, thermogravimetry, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and transmission electron microscopy. Our HTXRD studies show that the decomposition temperature of pure magnetite (Fe3O4) in vacuum is increased by 300 degrees C (from 700 to 1000 degrees C), with 0.2 fraction of Zn2+ doping. The DSC studies under air environment also show that the gamma-Fe2O3 to alpha-Fe2O3 phase transition temperature increases with the zinc fraction. The increase in transition temperature is attributed to the increase in the activation energy of the maghemite to hematite phase transition after the replacement of Fe3+ with larger diameter Zn2+ in the A site. Interestingly, the saturation magnetization increases from 61 to 69 emu/g upon 0.2 fraction of Zn2+, which augments the utility of the doped compound for practical applications. While the Curie temperature is found to increase with doping concentration, the blocking temperature shows an opposite trend. The blocking temperature values were found to be 262, 196, 144, and 153K for 0, 0.2, 0.4, and 0.6 fraction of zinc, respectively. The reduction in T-B is attributed to weak dipole-dipole interactions and local exchange coupling between nanoparticles. All the Zn2+ doped samples show superparamagnetic nature. These findings are extremely useful in producing superparamagnetic nanoparticles with enhanced magnetic properties for high temperature applications. (C) 2013 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4789610]