Structural characterization and rietveld refinement of CeO2/CoFe2O4 nanocomposites prepared via coprecipitation method

Abstract

The CeO2/CoFe2O4nanocomposites were synthesized through the co-precipitation approach followed by heat-treatment. As-prepared sample were sintered at temp 600C and 800C for two hours. To study the structural characterization of the prepared samples X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique was used. The obtained XRD data was further refined through the Rietveld method by using the fullprof suit software. The heat-treated samples exhibit two crystalline phases namely CeO2 and CoFe2O4. The refinement confirmed that all the samples are cubic structure. The CoFe2O4was found to have an fcc cubic structure with space group Fd-3m(227), whereas the crystal structure of CeO2 has fcc structure with space group Fm-3m(225). In this paper, the lattice parameters, bond length, bond angle, particle size, lattice strain, dislocation density were studied in detail. The Wyckoff positions and interatomic distance have been calculated.