Investigation of the Role of Ce3+ Substituted Ions on Dielectric Properties of Co-Cr Ferrites Prepared by Co-precipitation Method

A series of a CoCr0.04Ce (x) Fe1.96-x O-4 spinel ferrite system with 0 aecurrency sign x aecurrency sign 0.1 (in steps of 0.02) has been synthesized by the co-precipitation technique. The synthesized samples were characterized using a Fourier transform infrared spectroscope (FT-IR), Raman spectroscopy, a scanning electron microscope (SEM), and dielectric measurements. The typical FT-IR spectrum of the samples annealed at 850A degrees C exhibited two frequency bands due to the formation of octahedral (B-site) and tetrahedral (A-site) clusters of metal oxide, respectively. The SEM images showed the spherical morphology of synthesized material and confirmed the grain size in the range of (0.33-0.44) mu m. The decrease of permittivity with the increase of frequency in the range of 1 MHz to 3 GHz follows the Maxwell-Wagner model. Moreover, the Ce(3+)substituted materials have smaller values of loss tangent and dielectric constant especially for x = 0.10, which is favorable for the applications where low losses are desired. The value of ac (alternating current) conductivity increases with an increase in the frequency and decreases with Ce3+ substitution, which reflects the hopping mechanism at respective sites. Such characteristics of these materials may be suitablea for pound potential applications such as electromagnetic attenuation materials, switching applications, and microwave devices.