Magnetic and electrical traits of sol-gel synthesized Ni-Cu-Zn nanosized spinel ferrites for multi-layer chip inductors application

Abstract In the present investigation, Ag+/Mn2+/Cr3+ doped Ni-Cu-Zn nanosized spinel ferrites with the chemical composition Ni0.4Cu0.3Zn0.3Ag0.4xMn0.3xCr0.3xFe2-xO4 (x = 0.0, 0.05, 0.10, 0.15) were synthesized by sol-gel auto-combustion technique for reporting the microstructural, optical, magnetic and electrical properties of synthesized specimens. The identification of formation of single-phase structure of nanosized spinel ferrites was analyzed by X-ray diffractometry (XRD) and Field emitting scanning electron microscopy (FESEM). The crystallite size (D) decreases from 19 to 12 nm for lower concentration of dopants (x = 0.0, 0.05, 0.10) whereas for the higher concentration (x = 0.15), it starts increasing to 18 nm. As the crystallite size is less than 50 nm so, the synthesized Ni-Cu-Zn ferrites are suitable for obtaining noise to signal ratio in high density recording media. FESEM investigation depicted the presence of agglomerated and cubic magnetic nanoparticles. The FTIR investigation indicates the formation of characteristic absorption peak around 418.1–434.9 cm−1 and 571.2–592.5 cm−1 confirming our structural properties to a great extent. The magnetic characteristics are acutely investigated in regards with the structural and morphological traits. The saturation magnetization (Ms) and coercivity (Hc) are showing inverse relation to each other. With the increasing dopant concentration, Ms and nB was found to be decreasing from 66 emu/g to 54 emu/g and 2.82 μ B to 2.33 μ B . Such high values of Ms and lower values of Hc illustrated the magnetic soft nature of Ni-Cu-Zn nanosized spinel ferrites suitable for multi-layer chip inductors (MLCIs) applications. In addition to this, the decreasing trend of dc resistivity with temperature indicating the semi-conducting nature of prepared samples because of thermal mobility of charge carriers.