Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Applied Physics A (2020) 126:227 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-020-3407-x Infuence of antimony substitution on structural, magnetic and optical properties of cadmium spinel ferrite Safa Anjum 1  · Tafruj Ilayas 1  · Zeeshan Mustafa 2,3 Received: 28 September 2019 / Accepted: 12 February 2020 / Published online: 24 February 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020 Abstract In this present work, antimony-substituted cadmium ferrites with formula CdSb x Fe 2−x O 4 (x = 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5) have been synthesized using the ceramic route. The structural, surface morphological, magnetic and optical properties have been investigated using X-ray difractometer (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron micros- copy, vibrating sample magnetometer and UV–visible spectroscopy, respectively. XRD confrms the single cubic spinel structure of antimony-substituted cadmium ferrites. The lattice parameter increases due to the replacement of Fe +3 (0.64 Å) ions with Sb +3 (0.76 Å). FTIR gives the main vibrational band that lies in the range of 400–600 cm −1 which might be due to the stretching vibration of oxygen and metal ions, confrming the formation of spinel ferrite. The saturation magnetiza- tion decreases and coercivity increases as the concentration of non-magnetic antimony ion increases. The optical band gap energy decreases with increasing the concentration of antimony ions. Keywords Spinel ferrites · Magnetic properties · Optical properties 1 Introduction The ferrites have a lot of signifcant roles in the feld of science and technology. They have many interesting prop- erties on the basis of which they become more important for the researchers. Ferrites are ceramic compounds com- posed of iron oxide as an integral part combined chemically with one or more additional metallic elements [1, 2]. The basic formula of soft ferrite is MFe 2 O 4 where “M” repre- sents the divalent metal ions like Ni, Cu, Co, etc. (all the transition materials). Spinel ferrites like FCC structure have close-packed 32 oxygen anion sites arranged in such a way that they produce two types of spaces between them. “A” site represents the tetrahedral, and “B” site represents the octahedral. The classifcation of spinel ferrites is dependent on cationic distribution in the interstitial sites: The smaller tetrahedral site (A site) is surrounded by four oxygen ions, and the larger octahedral site (B site) is surrounded by six oxygen ions. Distribution of the cations on A and B sites is infuenced by ionic radius and electronic confguration. There are two types of spinel ferrite: First is the normal spinel ferrites (M +2 ) A [Me +3 ] B O 4 in which all trivalent ions occupy octahedral site and all the divalent ions occupy the tetrahedral site; second is the inverse spinel ferrite (Me 3+ ) A [M 2+ Me 3+ ]B O 4 in which trivalent ions are equally dis- tributed between tetrahedral and octahedral sites, whereas divalent ions occupy tetrahedral site. In these two types of spaces, cations like Fe +3 and M +2 have arranged themselves according to the structure [3, 4]. There are 64 tetrahedral and 32 octahedral sites in which these cations are placed in 8 tetrahedral sites and 16 octahedral sites, while the remain- ing sites are empty. These empty interstitial sites construct an open structure to allow the cations migration [5]. Spi- nel ferrites have ferrimagnetic properties, and it is used in many electronics and electrical components such as cores in inductors, electromagnets and transformers where the high electrical resistivity of ferrites makes the low eddy current losses. Other applications are microwave attenuators, TV, rod antennas, read/write heads, microwave devices and mul- tilayer chip inductors, lifting magnets, data storage devices, magnetic sensors, targeted drug delivery, medical diagnosis, * Safa Anjum Safa_anjum@hotmail.com 1 Department of Physics, Lahore College for Women University, Lahore, Pakistan 2 Department of Physics, Lahore Garrison University, Lahore, Pakistan 3 Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China