Structural, electrical, and magnetic studies of Cu²⁺ substituted MnFe₂O₄ nanoferrites synthesized via solution combustion technique

The current study focuses on the investigation of the effect of Cu²⁺ doping on the structural, optical, magnetic, and dielectric measurements of solution combustion synthesized MnFe₂O₄ nanoferrites with the use of different characterization techniques. XRD study reveals the creation of spinel cubic structure with no additional phases and from the XRD data, various structural parameters have been determined. For the detailed structural investigation of undoped and doped MnFe₂O₄ nanoferrites, the cation distribution is derived from the XRD pattern data and magnetization approach. The increment in bond angles (\({\theta }_{1}\), \({\theta }_{2}\), \({\theta }_{5}\)), suggests the strengthening of A–B and A–A exchange interactions, whereas a decrement in the bond angles (\({\theta }_{3}, {\theta }_{4}\)) results in the weakening of B–B exchange interactions. In addition, with the rise of Cu²⁺ dopants content, an enhancement in the coercivity (26.02–151.35 Oe) and retentivity (0.96–7.89 emu/g) is observed, whereas a decrement in the value of the saturation magnetization (17.71–42.78 emu/g) is found. From the dielectric measurements, with the increase in frequency, the dielectric constant and dielectric loss tangent are observed to decrease. Thus, in this study, comparable better values of saturation magnetization, retentivity, and coercivity are obtained and will result in the use of undoped and doped MnFe₂O₄ nanoferrites for electromagnets and multilayer chip inductors applications.