Green synthesis of nano-cobalt ferrite for the enhancement of structural, morpholological, magnetic, electrical and optical properties

Abstract

A method of green synthesis was employed to obtain cobalt ferrite nanoparticles (NPs) from orange extract of three different volumes (100 mL, 150 mL, 200mL) using Cobalt nitrate hexahydrate [Co(NO3)2.6H2O], Ammonium hydroxide (NH4OH) and ferric nitrate nonahydrate [Fe(NO3)3.9H2O]. The orange extract has proved to be effective in modifying the crystallite size as a higher amount of orange extract produced smaller-sized crystallite nanoparticles. Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), X-ray diffraction (XRD), simultaneous thermal analyzer (STA), UV–vis absorption spectroscopy, Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Vibrating Sample Magnetometer (VSM), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), were used to characterize the effects of varying amount of chelating agents (100mL, 150mL, and 200mL) on the morphological, structural, and optical characteristics of produced CoFe2O4. According to the XRD analysis, NPs' crystallite sizes range from 17 to 28 nm. The NPs' agglomerated shape and average particle size of 47–74 nm were observed by SEM. The distribution of chemical components among the particles with varying quantities of O, Fe, and Co was displayed with an Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX). FTIR analysis proved the synthesized samples' spinel structure, VSM studies show that the G1 sample has a relatively high magnetization, the band gap was found with the Kubelka-Munk technique and increased from 2.29 to 2.48 eV, respectively, using UV-vis absorption spectroscopy. It has been proven that orange fruit extract can be successfully used to prepare cobalt ferrite.