J Supercond Nov Magn DOI 10.1007/s10948-017-4170-x ORIGINAL PAPER ossbauer Analysis and Cation Distribution of Zn Substituted BaFe 12 O 19 Hexaferrites I. A. Auwal 1 · A. D. Korkmaz 2 · M. D. Amir 3 · S. M. Asiri 4 · A. Baykal 4 · H. G ¨ ung ¨ unes ¸ 5 · S. E. Shirstah 6 Received: 13 May 2017 / Accepted: 16 May 2017 © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2017 Abstract Barium hexaferrite is a well-known hard mag- netic material. Doping using nonmagnetic cation such as Zn 2+ were found to enhance magnetization owing to prefer- ential tetrahedral site (4f 1 ) occupancy of the zinc. However, the distribution of cations in hexaferrites depends on many factors such as the method of preparation, nature of the cation, and chemical composition. Here, Zn-doped bar- ium hexaferrites (Ba 1x Zn x Fe 12 O 19 ) were synthesized by sol-gel method. In this study, we summarized the mag- netic properties of Ba 1x Zn x Fe 12 O 19 (x = 0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3) BaM, investigated by M¨ ossbauer spectroscopy. More- over, cation distribution was also calculated for all the products. M¨ ossbauer parameters were determined from 57Fe M¨ ossbauer spectroscopy and according to it, the A. Baykal abaykal@uod.edu.sa 1 Department of Chemistry, Sule Lamido University, Kafin Hausa, Jigawa State, Nigeria 2 Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Engineering and Natural Science, Istanbul Medeniyet University, 34700 Uskudar, Istanbul, Turkey 3 Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Engineering, Istanbul University, 34320 Avcilar, Istanbul, Turkey 4 Department of Nano-Medicine Research, Institute for Research and Medical Consultations (IRMC), University of Dammam, P.O. Box 1982, Dammam 31441, Saudi Arabia 5 Department of Physics, Hitit University, 19030 C ¸ evre Yolu Bulvarı-C ¸ orum, Turkey 6 Spin Device Technology Center, Faculty of Engineering, Shinshu University, Nagano 380-8553, Japan replacement of Ba-Zn affects all parameters such as isomer shift, the variation in line width, hyperfine magnetic field, and quadrupole splitting. Cation distribution revealed the relative area of undoped BaM, 12k,2a, and 4f 2 positions which are close to theoretical values. Keywords Hexaferrites · Superparamagnetism · Hyperfine interactions · Cation distribution 1 Introduction The peroxdure or simply M-type hexagonal ferrites (Ba/SrFe 12 O 19 ), with magnetoplumbite structure, are gen- erally regarded as hard ferrites, due to their wide range of applications from permanent magnetic materials to microwave. Their intrinsic magnetic character is associ- ated with their crystal structure and magnetocrystalline anisotropy along their c-axis [1]. These materials are well known for their high resistivity, high magnetization per formula unit, high Curie temperature, large magnetic– dielectric loss, and low processing cost. They also found numerous technological applications like radar absorbing materials (RAMs), magnetic recording, channel filters, sen- sors, tuning slugs, sound systems, microwave gyromagnetic, and electronic devices [27]. The crystal structure of M-type hexaferrite composes of a unit cell which is the sum of two molecular M units which made up of 64 ions (32 per molecular unit). Each molecu- lar unit possess two kinds of blocks which are hexagonal R and cubical S in a serial order of SRS R (where S and R blocks are rotated around the axial through an angle of 180 ) overlapping one another. Out of 64 ions, 38 are of O 2 ions and 24 are of Fe 3+ ions which disposed over five symmetry sites, 1 tetrahedral (4f 1 ), 1 trigonal bipyramidal (2b), and