Zn substituted NiFe2O4 with very high saturation magnetization and negligible dielectric loss synthesized via a soft chemical route

Materials with high saturation magnetization and low dielectric loss are in great demand due to the great boom in communication industry. In this paper, we report the synthesis of nanoferrites with the generic formula Zn (x) Ni(1-x)Fe2O4 (x = 0.0, 0.1, 0.3 and 0.5) through chemical co-precipitation technique. The sample with x = 0.5 showed a saturation magnetization of 8.2 mu (B) which is the highest reported for any ferrite. Coupled to this excellent magnetic property, this ferrite has shown a negligible dielectric loss tangent over a large frequency window from 100 Hz to 1 MHz. The high values of saturation magnetization have been attributed to the composite effect of large-scale cationic migration and surface spin disorder.