Magnetic spinel ferrite nanoparticles are of great interest in fundamental science. Because of their ease of synthesis, low cost, and stable nature, ferrites are better than pure metals. Nanoparticles possess unique properties that can be applied in various applications such as microwave devices, magnetically guided drug delivery, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), cancer treatment, and more. Nano crystalline inverse spinel cobalt ferrite (CoFe2O4) nanoparticles were synthesized by a green method. Spinel ferrite nanoparticles can be synthesized by various methods such as reverse micelles, co-precipitation, hydrothermal synthesis, microwave-assisted routes, sol-gel auto-combustion method, and ceramic method.
Eclipta prostata is widely used in Chinese herbal medicine and in Ayurveda. The whole plant contains alkaloids nicotine and ecliptine, as well as coumarin. The leaves are used to treat fevers, eye diseases, asthma, bronchitis, liver problems, and diarrhea. A decoction is used to treat cancer. The leaves are used in the treatment of scorpion stings and as an antidote for snake bites.
Due to their extremely small size and large specific surface area, iron-containing transition metal oxide materials are known to exhibit interesting physical and chemical properties significantly different from those of conventional bulk materials.
Cobalt ferrite is a hard ferromagnetic material due to its high coercivity, high magnetocrystalline anisotropy, moderate saturation magnetization, and good structural stability at higher temperatures. In many technological applications, spinel ferrites are important magnetic materials due to their combined electrical and magnetic properties.
In the present study, we prepared CoFe2O4 nanoparticles using the green method. The crystal structure, morphology, elemental composition, size, and magnetic properties of CoFe2O4 nanoparticles were characterized by X-Ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), and Vibrating Sample magnetometer (VSM).
Structural characterization of CoFe2O4 nanoparticles
The crystalline structure and phase purity of spinel cobalt ferrite nanoparticles were characterized by XRD analysis. The diffraction peaks with 2θ values of spinel cubic cobalt ferrite correspond to crystal planes (220), (311), (400), (511), and (440) (JCPDS 22-1086). The crystallite size of cobalt ferrite nanoparticle is calculated using Scherrer’s formula.
D = 0.9λ
Where λ is the wavelength of the X-ray radiation (1.5406 Å), K is a constant taken as 0.89, θ is the diffraction angle, and β is the full width at half maximum. The crystallite size of cobalt ferrite is 24 nm.
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