Mössbauer studies of microwave sintered NiFe2O4-BaFe12O19 composites.

In the present work polycrystalline composites consisting of soft and hard ferrimagnetic phases with compositional formula (NiFe₂O₄)_100-x – (BaFe₁₂O₁₉)_x (x = 0,20,40,50,60,80,100) have been synthesized by sol-gel method. Thus formed materials were calcined at 1000 °C for 2 h and sintered in a microwave furnace at 1200 °C for 30 min. These composites were characterised structurally by X-ray diffraction studies and morphological studies were done using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Analysis of XRD data confirmed hexagonal structure with P63/mmc space group for Barium hexaferrite (BFO) and cubic structure with Fd-3 m (227) space group for Nickel ferrite (NFO). Mössbauer spectroscopy measurements were also done for the selected samples and the data is analysed to extract the hyperfine parameters of both the soft magnetic and hard magnetic phases and the results are used to corroborate the observed magnetic properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]