Effect of Gadolinium Doping on Structural Magnetic Dielectric and Optical Properties of Magnetite Fe3O4

Abstract

Doped ferrite materials offer a combination of enhanced magnetic properties, newlinemultifunctionality, higher Curie temperature, biocompatibility, and potential energy newlineapplications. In present work, Gadolinium-doped magnetite samples are synthesized following newlinethe co-precipitation method. Crystallites size was measured 7nm 14nm for pure and doped newlineFe3O4 from XRD data. An increase in crystallite size and cell volume is observed while a newlinereduction in micro-strain is observed with increase in doping concentration. The grain size was newlineestimated from FE-SEM data ranges from 9 to 16 nm. and is in good agreement with XRD data newlineand confirms the formation of nanoscopic phase of the particles. The presence of characteristic newlinepeaks concerned with tetrahedral and octahedral site vibrations in the Fourier transform newlineinfrared spectroscopy data approve the formation of inverse spinel structure. The distribution newlineof Gd in the samples is determined with Energy dispersive x-ray analysis. The optical studies newlineshow that the direct and indirect band gaps decrease from 4.07 to 3.95 eV and 3.79 to 3.65 eV, newlinerespectively. A saturation magnetization (MS) of 51.92 emu/g was determined for the pure newlinemagnetite nanoparticles. Pure magnetite (Fe3O4) nanoparticles saturation magnetization MS is newlineless than the theoretical value for bulk Fe3O4 , which stands at 96.42 emu/g. With Gd doping we newlinecan see that MS increases. This shows that magnetic properties of Fe3O4 increases with Gd newlinedoping with high concentration. The dielectric constant of Gd-doped Fe3O4 exhibit a reduction newlineas the frequency increases. With doping of Gd3+ ions to the Fe3O4 lattice it has been found that newlinedielectric losses increase except first doped sample (GdF1). newline