Influence of Cu2+substitution on the structural, optical, magnetic, and antibacterial behaviour of zinc ferrite nanoparticles

Ferrite nanoparticles are an emerging material for industrial and biomedical applica-tions. Herein, a simple non-aqueous sol-gel method is used to synthesize CuxZn(1-x)Fe2O4 (x = 0.0, 0.25, 0.5, and 0.75) nanoparticles. X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), UV-Vis spectroscopy, and a vibrating-sample magnetometer (VSM) were utilized to inves-tigate the structural formation and magnetic merits of the prepared ferrite nanoparticles. The Riet-veld refinement of the X-ray diffraction pattern confirmed the formation of single-phase cubic & DBLBOND; structures with Fd 3 m space groups for all samples. The increase in cu2+ concentration in zinc fer -rite nanoparticles decreases the lattice parameters from 8.4418 to 8.4368. The energy gap of cu2+- doped zinc ferrite increases from 1.89 to 2.04 eV with a decrease in particle size. MH loop revealed an increase in Ms and Mr Parameters as Hc reduces with an increase in Cu2+ concentration in the zinc ferrite matrix. It was discovered that an increase in Cu2+ content improved the antibacterial activities of Cu2+-doped zinc ferrite against all bacterial species.& COPY; 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).